Hell and Back

by Dirk Greyson

  “Thank you. I’m here to get a few personal things out of Granger’s office. I’m sure you’ve already secured the sensitive materials.” Forge didn’t wait for an answer and led Gage right through the lushly appointed space to a corner office. It wasn’t as big as he expected, but the paneled walls and massive, highly polished desk oozed money and luxury.

  “Check for the hidden space,” Gage said softly as he lowered himself into a chair, and Forge went to the business end of the desk and sat down.

  “Forge,” a man said as he breezed into the room, wearing a highly tailored suit that had to cost what Gage made in a week.

  “Francis.” Forge came around and received a man-hug with little warmth. “I just wanted to pick up a few of Granger’s personal things.”

  While they were speaking, Gage placed the bag with the puzzle box on the floor on the far side of the chair, hopefully out of sight, though he kept hold of the handle.

  “I understand.” Francis sat in another of the high-backed visitor chairs and made himself at home before turning to Gage with a stare that must intimidate half the juries in the state. Gage stared right back. If the guy wanted a pissing contest, he’d get out his ruler. He’d met plenty of men like Francis. “And you are?”

  “This is Gage. He’s an old friend who’s helping me through all this. There’s so much to go through, and I needed some help, as well as some extra protection.” Forge sat in Granger’s chair while Gage wished they could get on with what they came for. But he suspected Forge didn’t want to snoop while Francis was here. “This is Granger’s business partner, Francis Peterborough.”

  “Well, as long as you’re safe. That’s what counts.” Francis stopped glaring at Gage to turn to Forge. “In the next few weeks, you and I will need to sit down and review a buyout of Granger’s share of the firm, which, with him gone, has been greatly diminished. It’s sad but true.”

  Gage swallowed hard to keep from lashing out. What a slime! His business partner was dead and this guy was trying to stiff his estate of the fair value of one of his assets.

  “Of course.” Forge shifted in the chair, appearing uncomfortable.

  “Why wouldn’t you use a private firm to value the practice?” Gage offered, and Francis’s eyes darkened to near black, though Forge nodded.

  “I think that’s fair.” Forge sat up straighter and leaned forward on the desk. “I know according to the firm’s bylaws that I can’t take over Granger’s ownership because I’m not a lawyer and that’s what’s required, but I’m also not in a hurry to settle anything. And since the fiscal year completes in six weeks, I’ll see that through and will expect Granger’s usual payout. Then I’ll either sell his portion to another qualified attorney or you can buy me out. Either way, there isn’t going to be a discount or a fire sale.” Forge ran his hands over the top of Granger’s desk. “This desk is fairly comfortable, so maybe I’ll decide to use it.”

  Gage coughed slightly to cover up a chuckle. Francis looked about ready to swallow his teeth.

  The surprise lasted only a few seconds, and then Francis covered it up. “No one is trying to do anything other than what’s fair.”

  “I understand that, and decisions will be made in time without rushing. Granger always told me that decisions like this should be made with all due diligence.” Forge smiled, and Francis stood, a little shakily.

  “Let me know if there’s anything any of us can do for you.”

  “I will. Thank you. Once we have the schedule, I’ll send you the funeral details.” Forge didn’t move until Francis left, and then he motioned for Gage to close the door. As soon as the latch clicked, Forge slid back and pulled open the drawer like the one in the desk at home.

  “Intentionally pissing him off?”

  “Yeah. He’s nosy as hell—always has been. Francis is a great lawyer, but he has to know everything that’s going on and stick his nose in it. Granger metaphorically bloodied it more than once.” Forge pulled out the contents of the drawer, and Gage opened the lavender bag. Forge slipped the papers inside and closed things up, relatching the drawer in place. “Let’s get out of here. I’m tired and I want to be home.”

  Gage picked up the bag and opened the door, letting Forge lead the way out. Unlike Forge’s office, where everyone seemed happy to see him and acted like Forge was part of their family, here it was staid. Gage kept a close lookout until they reached the elevator, which they rode back to the garage.

  “Let’s go quickly.” Gage handed Forge the bag, paid the parking, and took off out of the garage, going as quickly as he could around the block, then taking a zigzagging route toward the freeway.

  “What is it?” Forge asked. “You keep looking in the mirror.”

  “Lower your visor and use the mirror. See the dark blue sedan about three cars back? It got behind us two blocks after we left the office, peeled off, and it’s back now.” Gage made another turn, slowing down, and sure enough, the blue car did the same.

  “I see it.”

  “Excellent. You watch them and I’m going to try to lose them. Make sure you have a good hold on something and are buckled in well.” Gage shifted lanes and then, at the last minute, swerved and made a left. A car honked at him, but he didn’t give a damn. The blue sedan didn’t make the turn, but they were far from out of the woods. He made a quick right down an alley, then another left, continuing on. He made another turn, emerging from the alley and onto the street. He decided that rather than make for the freeway right away, it would be better to use surface streets and smaller roads that wouldn’t be expected, at least for a while.

  “Martin Luther King will take us north,” Forge said, watching the mirror. “I don’t see the car, but if they truly were following us, they’re going to be looking.” He looked in both directions and in the mirror as Gage drove as quickly as he dared. He didn’t see anyone either, and once he reached Locust, he hurried to the freeway for the trip north.

  “The stupid thing is that if we are being followed, they have to know we’re most likely going to your house. Why act like this?” Gage said, then called Harv. “Anything at the house?”

  “All is quiet. Why?” Harv sounded miffed through the Bluetooth connection.

  “We believe we picked up a tail. So I was wondering if you’ve seen anything,” Gage said as he picked up speed, going with traffic and doing his best not to stand out. Instinct told him to go as fast as he could, but his training overrode that. They’d lost the tail, so he needed to blend in.

  “I’ll call if I do—wait…. Yes, we have a car that just pulled up down the block.” Harv grew quiet for a moment, then said, “They’re sitting inside. I’ll watch them.”

  “Description…?”

  “Black, late-model Toyota from the look of it.”

  “All right. Keep me informed.” Gage disconnected, his mind racing. Whoever they were up against was escalating. “We sure pissed someone off somehow.”

  “I guess. But where? Was it someone at the bank, my office, or Granger’s office?”

  “Maybe none of the above. We could have been followed all morning and I just happened to notice them now, and since we’ve shaken the tail, they’re waiting for us at the house, not realizing that we’ve got that watched.” Gage’s mind ran in a number of directions, ticking off possibilities. “One thing is for sure. We aren’t going to the house.” He exited at Brown Deer Road and drove west, working his way around to his office, where he could park out of sight and they could regroup to figure out what their next move was going to be.

  “The blue car behind us is getting….” Forge yelped as it banged into them. The rear of their car skidded, and Gage pressed the accelerator to the floor, flying down the wide street. He made a turn and then another, trying to shake them. “Jesus!”

  “Hold on.” Gage braked and turned, the rear end fishtailing, but the front-wheel drive pulled them out and the car leaped forward. The black car behind them didn’t make the turn, and Gage watched for a second as the
car went up on its side and continued rolling, over and over, before coming to rest in the parking lot of an empty bank building. Gage didn’t stick around to see if the driver was okay. “Call Coleridge and let him know what’s going on and that he needs to get people out to the accident. Hopefully they aren’t injured enough to keep them from talking.” He sped up once again and drove the rest of the way to the office. Using his remote to open the door, he pulled right inside and closed it behind them. They jumped out of the car and rode the elevator up to his floor.

  “Margie,” he called. “Make sure we aren’t being followed.” He continued through to his office.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said as he passed her desk. “I take it you had a little problem?”

  “Yes. We’ll be staying here for a while.”

  “The kitchen area is stocked with the basics, and you know we’re alarmed more than Fort Knox. What happened?”

  “Apparently we’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest and we have no idea why. Persons unknown think we have something they want, and dammit all if we know who they are or even what they’re looking for.” It was so frustrating. He turned to Forge, who was standing right behind him. He led him through to the temporary living quarters. “Are you okay? Did you get banged up?” Gage sure as hell hoped not. “Sometimes when I get into evasive mode—”

  “I’m okay, and you were amazing.” Forge beamed at him. “You knew exactly what to do, and when that car hit us, you….” He kicked the door closed, set the bag on the floor, and kissed Gage with enough heat to set the place on fire.

  Gage forgot about boxes and papers, as well as puzzles and damn near anything else, as he wound his arms around Forge and returned the kiss that had both of them shaking. Gage wasn’t sure if it was the postchase high, but he wasn’t going to question it. He devoured Forge’s lips as he tugged at his shirt, getting it off and dropped to the floor so he could have access to all that luscious skin.

  “You make me safe,” Forge groaned when their lips parted.

  “As long as you’re okay.” Gage kissed Forge again just as his phone rang. He pulled away with a deep growl and yanked the phone out of his pocket.

  “They’re still waiting,” Harv said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Scare the ever-loving shit out of them. The bastards here rear-ended me and tried to kill both of us. How you do it is fully up to you.” Gage chuckled. “And have fun.”

  Harv signed off, and Gage smiled as he put his phone back in his pocket.

  “I take it they’re still at the house.”

  “Harv will take care of it.”

  Forge nodded. “So I heard.” He seemed amused as he picked up his shirt to pull it back on. The moment seemed to have passed… at least for now. Once he was fully dressed again, Forge picked up the bag and carried it to the sofa, sat down, and took out the papers. He set them in a neat pile before removing the box and placing it on the table. “This really is exquisite. The light color is the most desirable, and the quality of the carving is mind-blowing. You expect the dragons to begin to move at any second.”

  “What will you do?” Gage asked, sitting next to him.

  “We need to identify the various pieces of stone, and then we might be able to see how they’ll move.” Forge turned the box around in his hands, but Gage couldn’t see where there were any pieces. It looked solid, and yet there was definitely something inside. “See, this is one piece, right here, and this is another.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “They made the joins in the stone part of the design, but these lines are a little more defined than some of the others. What I need to find is the initial piece. None of those will move. So I have to find the lock, the one part that starts everything.” Forge moved his fingers over the various parts of the dragon design, carefully studying it. “I’m not seeing anything more.” He set the box back on the table and picked up the papers. He glanced at them and handed some to Gage. “Take a look. Even I know who these people are.”

  Gage took the pages and skimmed through them. “Holy crap! How did he get involved with these people? They break legs for looking at them the wrong way.” Gage read through each of the papers, which were contracts and details of various bank accounts.

  “Yeah.” Forge looked over the rest of the pages and handed them to him. “I think we know who’s after us… at least who might be after us. But—” Forge stopped, the page he was holding fluttering as his hand shook. “You need to see this.”

  Gage took the page, read it over, and it wasn’t until he took a second look that he noticed the name at the top of the document. Harrison Livingston, his father. It couldn’t be, and yet the document contained his father’s name and address, as well as the same phone number he currently had in his phone directory. The document also listed financial transfers, dates, and amounts, as well as vague reasons for the money. “What the hell?”

  “Bribes and payoffs that the Lucci family was making. I’m willing to bet these are only some of what Granger had, and he was keeping them in the desk as a kind of insurance.”

  “But to my parents?” Gage swore under his breath.

  “Well, to your dad….” Forge let the thought hang.

  “My mother and father are like half of one person. If he did anything without her, she’d have his nuts for lunch. And my mother is just as dependent on my dad. They’re like a well-oiled machine. So if this is true, then my holier-than-thou parents—the ones who don’t understand me being gay and the ones who most likely intercepted your letter all those years ago—are up to their ears in some pretty shady shit.” He kept looking at the page, hoping like hell it wasn’t true. Even in the back of his mind, he wondered if this could be something fake. Maybe it was designed to blackmail his parents or something, though why would Granger hide a fake document in a secret compartment in his desk? In case someone stumbled on it? That didn’t seem likely.

  “This is turning out to be a huge mess.” Forge continued scanning each document and handing them to Gage, who reviewed each one and set them aside. Some of the documents lacked context, and neither of them knew what they meant, but Gage looked them over, filing away the information for later reference. “What do we do with all this?”

  Gage breathed as evenly as possible. They were sitting on a potential powder keg. “Let me think. If we go public with this….”

  “My gut is telling me to hold on to them. If Granger kept them as insurance, then we’re going to need some too… and more. After all, Granger’s dead.”

  “Okay.” Gage stood, pacing the floor. “What do we do with it?”

  “When we get back to the house, hide it in Granger’s desk? They didn’t find it when they looked before, so they aren’t going to find it now. If something were to happen to me, Detective Coleridge knows about the desk drawer, and maybe we can make sure he would get notified.”

  “That’s possible. We can certainly set up a nuclear bomb type thing. I’ve done it many times in the past. Mostly I work with wives needing protection on their husbands, and they tend to know things the men don’t want made public. I set up an automatic information release if a set of circumstances are met. The second piece is a little trickier in our case. With a divorce we simply make sure the other party knows to behave and is aware of the consequences. That’s harder in this case.” Gage scratched his head and stacked the papers together, retrieving an envelope from his office and sliding the papers inside. “Let’s think this through before we decide on anything. Maybe the contents of the box will help us figure out what we want to do or can help the police.”

  “But I can’t get it open,” Forge said.

  “You will. I have faith in you.” Gage smiled and sat back down, putting his arm around Forge’s shoulders. “Just give your mind a chance to work on it.” The high-powered energy from earlier had dissipated, and though Gage missed it, sitting quietly next to Forge was pleasant and surprisingly satisfying. Gage was an action guy, had been most of his lif
e, so being quiet with someone was a relatively new experience for him, at least as part of his recent experience.

  “Gage,” Forge whispered, leaning against the arm of the sofa.

  “Yeah…?”

  “You aren’t going to disappear in a puff of smoke or something, are you?” Forge sounded like a small child at that moment, asking about his worst fear.

  “Why would I?” He’d gotten the one thing he’d always wanted and dreamed of, a chance to reengage with Forge.

  Forge turned to him, sitting upright. “I thought Granger would be with me forever. We had promised to be there and live our lives together. Then he decided I wasn’t good enough and stepped out with some twink. The grass was greener somewhere else. And to make it worse, Granger didn’t even care about the guy. He just messed up everything we had for nothing.”

  “You know none of that was your fault.” Gage could almost see the hurt gathering around Forge like a deep shadow growing darker around him. “You didn’t deserve to be cheated on, and you didn’t do anything to make Granger want to leave. Whatever happened, and whatever he did, was his issue.”

  “But I wasn’t enough for him. I should have known what he wanted and been able to keep him happy.” Forge frowned.

  Gage groaned softly. “I see this with my clients all the time. You can never be responsible for someone else’s happiness. Most people don’t understand that happiness is internal. It’s like a spring from within, and if Granger’s spring ran dry and he thought he needed to look somewhere else, other than you, then that was his problem. Yes, other people can make us unhappy, but our happiness or ultimate lack of it is our own. We own it.”

  Forge turned and leaned a little closer. “But he said I wasn’t what he needed anymore.”

  “He decided that, and he was the one who walked away from the relationship. But he did it for his own reasons, and contrary to what he wanted you to believe, it was his decision, his fault, and he owns it. Even though he’s dead, Granger doesn’t get a pass unless you give him one.” Gage shifted closer, and Forge leaned against him. Gage pulled Forge a little closer. He had no idea if Forge understood what he was trying to say, but it had to be said.