Infected Freefall

by Andrea Speed

  Then something strange happened. Roan was trying to figure out the best way to infiltrate the family’s business circle when he suddenly found himself on the floor. It felt as dramatic as that: he was chopping peppers one second, and the next he was lying on the floor, getting a good look at the tile. Only when he shoved himself up to a sitting position and grabbed his fallen paring knife, head aching slightly from the impact, did he realize that there had been a moment of blackness, like a prolonged blink. Had he passed out for a second? Why the hell would he do that?

  He sat there for a moment, rubbing his head, trying to mentally shake the fuzzy feeling away from his brain. Was this some stupid-ass side effect to the migraine meds he’d got today? What a fucking pain in the ass. The meds were nice, but they came with a grab bag of weird side effects. One migraine medication he used to take left him with pulled muscles in his arms, and he could never figure that out.

  Roan pulled himself up, wondering how long he’d been out, and went back to making the pasta sauce, not about to let the medication stop him from what he was doing. He was just about done anyways.

  As it was, no further side effects plagued him. A good thing, as Dylan showed up after two in a kind of sour mood—it had been a bad night at Panic. There had been a gay-bashing incident right outside the club that almost led to a small riot, and Dylan sat with the guy who took a bottle in the face and had a bleeding gash in his head until the cops and paramedics showed up. And while the cops were all professional and very PC, he heard one of them, supposedly safely ensconced in his car, joke to someone over his radio that he needed to be decontaminated after dealing with all these fags.

  The truly awful thing about that was Roan could guess by name which officer had made that joke. Prick.

  But Dylan was cheered up by dinner, and even Roan had to admit he’d done a pretty good job with it. (Especially considering he’d passed out during the proceedings, but he didn’t tell Dylan that.)

  About three-thirty or so in the morning, Dylan got to drawing the tiger sketch on his arm in permanent ink. He actually used a calligraphy pen, as he liked the tapered tip better for making thinner lines, which Roan knew nothing about. To make it easier for Dylan, he lay shirtless on the bed, left arm held out straight across the comforter, and Dylan was kneeling beside the bed and occasionally partly on it, drawing the thing. Soon, Roan became rapt watching Dylan—not the sketch, although he knew that was coming on beautifully. No, he was fascinated watching Dylan create something. His full concentration was on it, as if Roan really was a canvas. He might as well have been. Dylan was so caught up in what he was doing, he never even looked at him once he got started. And Roan found that almost unbearably arousing.

  The one thing that really made their relationship work so far was that, at the end of the day, they were both rather private people. Dylan liked to paint in solitude (if he was doing a portrait, he’d sketch it, and paint it later in privacy), just like Roan liked to have time to himself, to research, put notes together, or just relax, without the strange pressure of other people. This was absolutely fine with Dylan, who equally cherished his private time. Roan sometimes wondered if shitty childhoods predisposed you to act in this way, although Paris was probably the exception to that rule.

  So he didn’t see Dylan paint a lot. He saw him sketch quite a bit, but he was always half-distracted when he did that. It was almost unconscious, a reflex action that didn’t need his full attention. Roan had never seen him in full concentration before, in full creation mode, his eyes as focused as lasers and yet strangely distant at the same time, turned inward toward his mental canvas. And it was incredibly fucking sexy.

  Once he was done, Dylan blew softly on the ink, attempting to speed drying, and used a paper towel to gently blot his arm. The look finally went out of his eyes—he was back in the real world—and he sat on the edge of the bed. “I had to stop myself from going further detail-crazy. Tell Jade she lucked out. Maybe I should look into becoming a tattoo artist.”

  “Yeah, you probably should,” Roan agreed and grabbed him and pulled him into a long, hard kiss. Dylan seemed momentarily surprised but offered no resistance at all.

  They had some of the most incredibly intense sex they had ever had. Roan knew he’d been kind of horny yesterday, but it was nothing like right now. And why? Who the hell knew, and who the fuck cared? Not him.

  Ironically, he didn’t even see the finished sketch on his arm until he got up later that morning, around ten. (And he was still tired, because they’d been up until about five, but his bladder insisted he get up.) It was beautiful, a slinky, black tiger made of deep, black lines that rarely connected. There were many suggestions of connections, but few actual ones. It was almost an optical illusion. “That is fucking beautiful,” he said aloud to his reflection. It was. He almost didn’t want Jade to impose on this. If it was in permanent ink, maybe he could wait a day or two before going to see her.

  Roan considered going back to bed, but weirdly enough, as tired as he was, he seemed to get a second wind out of nowhere. He felt almost jazzed for no reason whatsoever. He called Holden and told him that, although Roan knew he was the client, he was wondering if he’d be willing to assist in the investigation. Much like he’d expected, Holden jumped at the chance. After that, he called Fiona and arranged for the three of them to meet at an indie coffee shop in the gay part of town, mainly because he knew there was little chance anyone working for the Newberrys would spot them there. He also told her the case they were working on and asked if she had any untraditional information sources on the Newberrys. Fiona had a lot of unconventional information sources that, while rarely confirmable in any sense, still passed on accurate info. One of the perks of being a dominatrix with friends in both the temp agencies and the sex-worker network.

  Roan took a leisurely shower and decided not to shave, as he thought his stubble looked stereotypically detective-like, and while he was getting dressed, he accidentally woke Dylan up. He just turned over in bed and asked muzzily, “Are you going?”

  “Afraid so.”

  Dylan’s response to that was simply to steal his pillow and slip it under his head. As he pulled the covers over him, Roan asked him impulsively, “What would you think about moving in with me?”

  Dylan just lay there, and for a moment Roan thought he’d already drifted off again, but then Dylan said, “I’d think it was a good idea.”

  “Great.” Well, Dylan spent most of his nights here anyways. They were kind of already living together.

  Since Roan needed to look like a stereotypical private detective, he wore a more professional-looking outfit, with dark slacks, a neutral button-down shirt (a kind of bronze-colored brown, minus anything remotely metallic), and his London Fog trench coat. But he drew two lines: he wouldn’t wear a tie (he fucking hated ties; the only time he wore them was when he was forced to, such as to testify in court), and he had no loafers or slip-on shoes to wear. So he went with his black leather boots that could kind of pass for leather shoes if you didn’t look too hard or weren’t fashion oriented. (Meaning basically straight men and gay women, but that was a horrible stereotype—he was gay, and he knew nothing about fashion at all. Which his wardrobe proved, day in and day out.) He was going to pay a visit to the Newberrys later, and he wanted them to think he was just your run-of-the-mill private investigator/office drone, no one special, no one different. He also wanted them to think he was investigating something other than Joel. He hadn’t yet settled on his cover story.

  It wasn’t downpouring today, or at least not yet. It was a heavily overcast day, though, a kind of lambent slate-gray, with an occasional errant water droplet to let you know it was thinking about dousing you like a drunken co-ed in a Girls Gone Wild video. But it had yet to go wild, so all it would do was occasionally spit.

  He wanted to take the bike, but took the GTO instead, as how many drone detectives drove Buells? Then again, how many drove lovingly restored ’60s muscle cars? It still seemed like th
e lesser of two evils, and besides, without Paris to work on it, the GTO was starting to look a little rougher, which worked with the image he was trying to convey.

  The coffee shop was a little café that was trying to eke out a living in spite of Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee and all those other competitors. He wished them luck. Right now it was getting by on two things: being openly gay in the gay section of town (rainbow flag in the window, along with a “Silence = Death” sticker and a flyer for the local pride day parade), and having a pastry chef who actually could make stuff that was so fucking good you couldn’t believe any other coffee shop would try and foist their stupid hockey-puck pastries on you. It was run by a couple of guys: Tony, who was originally from Kansas, and Brett, the pastry chef, who originally came from Louisiana. Roan didn’t know much about them, except they had been a couple for a while, and Tony called everybody “Sugar.”

  Even though he was a little early, Fiona and Holden had already grabbed a table in the corner and were waiting for him. As he sat down, Fiona said, “Whoa, going to court today, Roan?”

  “I didn’t even know he had a shirt that wasn’t a T-shirt,” Holden teased, pushing the plate of croissants over toward him. Oh goddamn it, Holden knew his weakness was croissants. How did he know that?

  “I am trying to look professional, thank you.” He sniffed with mock haughtiness, picking up a croissant and resisting the urge to shove the whole damn thing in his mouth. The croissants here were so good, they’d make you punch a nun.

  “I didn’t know that was a prerequisite,” Holden replied.

  “First I’ve heard of it,” Fiona agreed.

  It was always dangerous getting these two together. They’d known each other before he knew Fiona, and they had a preexisting relationship. They got along fabulously, which could be a major problem, as they were both smart-asses and had a tendency to riff off one another, to the point where you wanted to run screaming from the room. But since Roan was a smart-ass too, he was determined to find a way to handle them.

  One of the baristas who doubled as a waiter occasionally drifted over to see if he could get them anything. He was a skinny, heavily pierced and tattooed kid named Jake, who seemed to love doing funky things with his hair (today it was a faux hawk). Normally he treated Roan with a sort of disaffected air, as if barely aware he even existed, but today he was oddly solicitous, and when Roan asked for a tea, he seemed weirdly… flirty? Really?

  Roan shared a look with Holden, who was grinning at him. “What the hell was that about?”

  “It’s the suit,” Holden claimed. “It makes you look rugged, but financially stable.”

  “And that shirt’s a really nice color on you,” Fiona said, reaching over and fingering the material of his sleeve. “You know, metallic-type shades usually don’t look great on redheads, but you can pull it off.”

  “Thanks, I think. Um, business, guys? Can we get to it?”

  “I’d rather flirt with the waiter, see if I can get us free profiteroles,” Holden replied.

  “Ooh, do that!” Fiona encouraged. “See if you can get him to throw in an éclair too.”

  This was his crack team of investigators? Oh good lord, they were doomed.

  At some point, they settled down and got to business.

  Fiona hadn’t been able to discover a lot from her contacts, except for one interesting thing: Kyle Newberry, Joel’s second-marriage son, was a party animal. No shock there, he was a professional gadabout, but in a society where that was an actual job description as long as you came from a wealthy family (Paris Hilton, any Kardashian, the entire cast of The Hills), that was no longer considered a shameful thing to be. Here was the thing: in spite of Kyle’s recent engagement to wealthy socialite Embeth Asher, Fi kept running into scuttlebutt that he was at many a party that devolved into an orgy. Gay parties. What she heard was he was a major-league flamer but stayed firmly in the closet. Holden wasn’t surprised, although Joel had never talked about Kyle to him. Holden just figured that, Joel being bisexual, some kind of alternative sexuality had to be genetically within the family.

  Holden wanted to see if he could work an angle on John Newberry. Roan wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t want revenge to interfere with anything, but Holden swore to him that he was going to pretend he didn’t know him at all and stick to the script. Roan had no choice but to trust him.

  Fiona wanted to work the wife, Cherry, as she felt, being a fellow woman, she’d be nonthreatening to her. Well, nonthreatening as long as Fi kept her riding crop and ball gag in her purse, anyways.

  This left Roan with the kids, which he thought it was best he handled anyways. They were much lower on the suspect list than anyone else, but he figured as soon as he could eliminate them he could move on to the ex-wives, who seemed like more likely possibilities. No one could hold you in more contempt than an ex-lover, save for a brother or sister.

  Having their assignments and the reporting-back protocol, they broke up and went their separate ways. Holden actually helped him come up with a plausible cover story for his identity, which wasn’t that surprising, considering how close he was to Joel.

  Roan went to pay a visit to Bill Newberry, eldest of the kids, family scion, and all-around anal-retentive asshole, who worked for Armstrong Anderson. He ended up talking with a secretary who seemed to hold him in withering contempt, glaring at him like he’d just run over her dog. He told her how he was working on background checks for One World, who liked to thoroughly vet everyone before doing business with them. As soon as he said “One World,” her antipathy seemed to ratchet down several notches, and she finally told him that Bill was out meeting a client, but if he wanted to come back tomorrow she would make sure he would see him first thing. Disappointing, but not really unexpected.

  “You could vet me,” a voice purred behind him, a voice that came with a strong smell of expensive cologne.

  Roan turned to find Kyle Newberry there, grinning at him in a sly, calculated way.

  Kyle was twenty-two and a pretty boy of the highest order, pretty in a way that professional gadabouts with nothing but time on their hands could be. He looked airbrushed even in person, his pores so small they were almost microscopic, with a square jawline and bright eyes highlighted by just the faintest hint of professionally applied guyliner. His hair was glossy black and artfully unkempt, three-hundred-dollar bed head, and his eyes were an unreal emerald, obviously aided by tinted contacts. He wore a needlessly expensive Prada cashmere V-neck and calfskin boots, but his black, silk-blend blazer and khakis were probably some other designer label, something so insanely expensive that if Roan had known the price of them, he’d have started beating him right here in the lobby. But they were all so precisely fitted that you could tell he had a lean but hard gym-toned body. He looked like Paris’s slightly more girlish half brother.

  “I didn’t realize you worked here,” Roan said, keeping his tone neutral so Kyle didn’t hear the unspoken, “I didn’t know you worked anywhere.”

  Kyle grinned at him, flashing blindingly white and eerily perfect teeth. Movie-star teeth. That probably cost more than his wardrobe combined. “Just like you, I came to see my brother. And just like you, I’m disappointed to find him gone.” During that last sentence, he looked over Roan’s shoulder and gave the receptionist behind him a look that wasn’t so much annoyed as it was homicidal. Something very ugly flashed through his eyes, a spoiled brat about to throw the mother of all tantrums. “I’d think he’d want me to know where he is.”

  The receptionist’s voice became cowed and ingratiating. “I’m sorry, sir, but he left explicit instructions that he was not to bothered by anyone, even Mrs. Newberry.”

  Kyle hissed a sigh through his teeth, and as he looked away it almost became a whispered word. “Cunt”? Roan was pretty sure; there were few other words it could have been. But when he looked back at Roan, a slimy, ingenuous grin was pasted on his face. “Well then, I guess we could kill some time together, huh?”
/>
  The way he stared into his eyes, his lips curving up ever so slightly, Roan realized Kyle was very subtly flirting with him. Gay? So gay he probably made Graham Norton look straight.

  And recalling that ugly look he’d just given his brother’s receptionist, Roan wondered how bad his temper was, how mean.

  Kyle Newberry had just moved into the top-five-suspect list.

  10

  The Shit Sisters

  THEY went down the street to what could be called an upper-class fern bar, where they served wine around the clock with overly expensive meals. Kyle ordered the wine without the food. Roan contented himself with water, although Kyle kept trying to rope him into joining him. When Roan mentioned he didn’t like wine, all he did was snort.

  This place tried for an airy café look even inside, with high, small round tables and window walls looking out on grim sidewalks that no amount of potted plants could disguise. Kyle got them a corner table (of course), and the table was so goddamn small it was a joke. Their knees were almost touching just sitting across from each other.

  Roan laid the groundwork for his cover story, asking Kyle about what he did for the company and basic background shit (Kyle said he worked in “publicity” for the station, and it was all Roan could do not to laugh), and Kyle gulped down two glasses of wine like he was dying of thirst. By the third, color started seeping into his complexion, and he was deliberately rubbing his knee against Roan’s. Every time Roan moved his leg, Kyle’s leg still managed to find his again. He was considering kicking him, but he felt the need to ingratiate himself with this drunken playboy loser until he was further along in his investigation.

  Kyle got tipsy enough to get bored with his questions, and as Roan was writing one of his answers down in his notebook (actually, he was writing “Hard-core alcoholic—needs to be drunk to relax around people”) Kyle touched his hand. Roan reflexively yanked it away. “Whoa, hey, man, just lookin’ at your ring,” he said, partially smiling, a lopsided look that only made him appear drunker. “That an engagement ring? I didn’t think women liked that kind of shit.”