by Josh Lanyon
No kidding. Elliot’s heart was still thumping in adrenaline overdrive, but yeah, they were good.
“You following us over or are you en route?” Pine asked Tucker.
Tucker looked at Elliot. Elliot said, “We’re on our way.”
Pine gave him a thumbs-up and turned away.
“Uh, Lance,” Elliot said. “Remember that little talk we had about you not keeping stuff from me? You didn’t think to mention we had how many law enforcement agencies hiding out in our backyard ready to spring this trap?”
Tucker looked guilty but, being Tucker, instantly recovered. “No point in both of us missing out on a night’s sleep, right?” he asked hopefully. “You were dead on your feet—”
Elliot started to answer—forcefully—and Tucker said quickly, “Okay, okay, Professor. Last time. I promise...”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Coffee?” Tucker asked.
Elliot looked away from the window onto the interview room where Connie Foster was sullenly answering Detective Pine and Special Agent Yamiguchi’s questions.
“Thanks.” He took the paper cup, sipped the bitter coffee and nearly choked. Tucker had tried to dilute it with half-and-half and sweetener, but it was still spectacularly awful coffee.
Foster was saying, “No way were you going to let an FBI agent die. The head of your task force? You’d have had to negotiate. Mills would have had to negotiate.”
Tucker muttered, “She’d—they’d—have to be nuts to think that plan was ever going to work.”
Elliot shrugged. One thing Corian had got right was that Elliot would have been willing to do pretty much anything to get Tucker back. Right up until the end, Corian had understood the mind-set of his various victims perfectly. Elliot had been no exception.
Tucker said, “I’m guessing Corian had a different outcome in mind. I don’t think he’d believe abducting me would lead to negotiating the death penalty off the table. But so long as you believed he believed it, he could keep you jerking on his line. And that was always going to be the point. Making you suffer as much as possible.”
Yes. Tucker probably had that right. The only reason Tucker was still alive was because Corian had been put out of commission and his accomplices hadn’t known how to proceed. They still believed the goal was forcing law enforcement to the negotiating table. And since Tucker wasn’t going anywhere...
“When did you discover your son was killing the young men he brought home?” Yamiguchi asked.
“After he was arrested,” Foster said. She shrugged.
The shrug was...strange. Kids these days! That’s what the shrug seemed to convey.
“Come off it,” Pine said. “You’re trying to tell us you had no idea your long-lost son was a serial killer? You were helping him the whole time.”
“No. I was not.”
“You moved out there so you could be near him and help him with his sick hobby.”
“I don’t care what you believe,” Foster said. And she did seem completely and coldly indifferent.
Yamiguchi intervened again. “You’ve said Corian communicated with you through letters smuggled out by prison guard Tamir Flurry. He was also in contact with his ex-wife, Honoria Sallis. Are we right in assuming Sallis was part of this?”
“That snooty bitch?” Foster laughed. “No. She wouldn’t risk her manicure, let alone her cushy lifestyle. I tried to plant that agent’s belongings all over Capitol Hill to get you to at least look at her, but you dumb-asses never found any of it. His suitcase was in a Dumpster. But no, you couldn’t locate it. You couldn’t even find his phone! We could have left him in the Dumpster and you wouldn’t have found him. What did it all come down to? A stupid dog. My God.”
“Yeah, about that dog. Let’s get back to the murder of Todd Rice,” Pine said. “Why did you kill him?”
Foster stared at the two-way mirror behind which Elliot and Tucker stood. “Is he back there? Mills. Is he listening to this?”
“Miss Foster.” Yamiguchi tapped her finger on the tabletop to draw Foster’s attention. “How did you persuade Torin Barro to help you abduct Agent Lance?”
Connie was still staring as though she could see through the mirror. “I was waiting for you to open the door,” she told Elliot. “You took away my son’s life. I was going to kill you. Why didn’t you open that door?” She began to cry. “Why didn’t you open the door?”
Tucker put a hand on his shoulder and gave Elliot a hard squeeze. “You know what—”
Elliot nodded. Turned away from the window. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
They were pulling off their clothes as they entered the house, ignoring Sheba, who was circling them and barking in welcome.
Tucker’s shirt and shoes disappeared somewhere between the kitchen table and the hallway. Elliot’s shirt landed ghostlike over the standing lamp next to the rocker. Tucker’s jeans hit the floor next, belt buckle chiming on hardwood.
Elliot nearly made it to the stairs, but tripped over Sheba, who yelped and scooted out of the way as Tucker pushed him the rest of the way down on the bottom step, tugging at his Levi’s.
“Pardon my reach,” Tucker panted, “but if we don’t fuck pretty soon, my heads may explode.” He was laughing—so was Elliot—but the desperation was real. On both sides. The million years between this and the last time they’d had sex had been too damned long.
Elliot wriggled out of the confines of blue denim, ignoring the twinge his knee gave at the awkward movement. “Christ, yes. Please. Fuck me, Tucker...”
Finally free of Levi’s and shorts, Elliot pushed his hips back in shameless invitation, inarticulate with need. He shuddered pleasurably at the velvety scrape of Tucker’s unshaven jaw over the sensitive skin of his lower back and ass cheeks, bucking as Tucker’s lips and tongue teased his crease for a moment.
“Oh, Christ. Christ, Tucker...”
A butter-slick finger—now, that was presence of mind; Tucker had grabbed the butter from the dish?—pierced him, began to work him with nasty expertise. So intimate. So knowing.
“What do you want?” Tucker’s breath was hot on his naked back, the nape of his neck, and Elliot was shivering with every press and push of that big blunt finger moving inside him. He moaned and tried to move more deeply into Tucker’s touch. But it wasn’t enough. He needed to be stretched and filled, needed to feel Tucker’s cock moving deeply inside him.
“No.” Tucker was loving and ruthless, keeping his touch too light to really satisfy. “You have to tell me. I want to hear the words from you.”
“I want to be fucked. I need to be fucked. By you. Need you, Tucker. Please...” Elliot was babbling, begging.
“You want my dick inside you? Is that what you said?”
Elliot nodded frantically, hips pushing hard.
“I want my dick inside you too,” Tucker whispered, and one finger was now two, stretching Elliot, making him feel vulnerable and naked and helpless, stretched wide for the broad smooth head of Tucker’s big cock.
And there it was. Tucker’s cock rubbed against his hole. So big. A reminder of who was boss here. Who did the fucking and who had to kneel with his ass in the air and take it. Elliot whimpered at the weak, undignified pleasure of being the guy who got fucked as Tucker shoved in. Hot and slick and hard.
“Oh...oh...” Stupid, unguarded sounds tearing out of him at that sweet burn. “Oh, Tucker...”
Tucker pushed all the way in, the tickle of pubic hair against his ass. “Jesus, Elliot. This is...just...”
He rocked experimentally, then harder, pushing Elliot, who braced to meet it, head resting on his arms, eyes focused on the edge of the glossy wooden step. He met each thrust with a low groan, legs spread, hips angled for maximum penetration.
“More. Oh Christ, m
ore....”
“Love. You. So. Much,” Tucker said between thrusts. “Never. Felt. Like. This. About. Anyone. Just. You.”
The crazy beautiful weirdness of sex with someone who totally got what turned you on and, even better, could deliver what you needed exactly when you needed it most.
“Love you too...”
Tucker gave a sudden, deep groan and Sheba began to bark.
Laughter welled in Elliot’s chest. He started to yell at the dog, but release seemed to roll up out of nowhere, bubbling out of the dark intensity of the moment, sudden and overwhelming as a tsunami, catching him totally, terrifically off guard. One second he was riding that wave of sexual satisfaction and the next it felt like he’d caught fire, was about to spontaneously combust, feeling an orgasm so fiercely exquisite it seemed to blaze in every molecule from the ends of his hair to the tips of his toes.
He sucked in what felt like his last breath and began to come, shooting wet white heat all over the steps, and wouldn’t have been surprised to see the varnish sizzle away where the drops landed.
At the same time he was distantly surprised to recognize the sounds and sensations of Tucker also reaching orgasm—and with equal violence.
Elliot’s shaking arms gave way and he crashed down. Tucker collapsed on top. He was trembling a little, his breaths harsh against Elliot’s ear.
Elliot began to laugh harder. Thank God for endorphins because between his knee and his spine...
“You’re crazy,” Tucker gasped, but he was chuckling too and trying to unfold without putting his weight on Elliot. “Are you okay?”
Elliot nodded, accepting Tucker’s help in sitting up.
“I think I put my back out,” Tucker said.
“I think we scared the dog.”
They looked at Sheba, who had stopped barking and was sitting a few feet away, watching them, her head cocked.
Tucker’s breath whooshed out in another unsteady laugh. “Why do I feel like she’s grading my performance?”
Elliot rested his face on his hand, starting to laugh again.
“Yeah, okay. But is she going to start barking every time we—”
Tucker broke off as his cell phone rang from the pile of his jeans. Yamiguchi’s ring. Elliot stopped laughing. They looked at each other.
Tucker’s expression hardened. He said with a flat certainty, “Corian just woke up.”
Instinct? Intuition? Or just putting into words the thing they dreaded: the next round.
His own cell began to ring from the kitchen. “I don’t think so,” Elliot said. “I think that’s Yamiguchi phoning to say it’s all over.”
Tucker’s phone shrilled again. His gaze shifted to the phone, slid back to meet Elliot’s.
“Either way, you will never again open your eyes to another day not spent thinking of me.”
“No way.” Elliot jumped up, ignoring the pull of misused muscles—or maybe well-used muscles. He turned to head up the stairs. “We’re off the clock. You’re on sick leave. And we’re not—not—living the rest of our lives jumping through Corian’s hoops. Let it ring. Game. Over.”
He reached for Tucker and Tucker met him halfway. Their mouths met and Elliot felt the curve of Tucker’s smile pressing against his own.
* * * * *
To purchase and read more books by Josh Lanyon, please visit Josh’s website at www.joshlanyon.com.
COMING SOON FROM CARINA PRESS AND JOSH LANYON
A vacationing librarian must solve the murder of fellow tourists when someone begins picking off members of a bus tour traveling through the scenic highlands and islands of Scotland.
Read on for a sneak preview of MURDER TAKES THE HIGH ROAD, the new stand-alone mystery by Josh Lanyon.
I said, “I don’t know why not, since I told you I planned on coming on this trip.”
“That you’d be this petty, this vindictive.”
“I paid for the trip. The trip was my idea in the first place. Vance doesn’t know Vanessa Rayburn from Vanessa Redgrave. If anyone is being petty and vindictive, it’s you bringing him on this trip that we planned together.”
“This was supposed to be for my birthday.”
That was true and I felt a twinge of guilt. But I shook it off.
“That was the justification for it, but you know as well as I do that it was for both of us. It was something we’d both talked about doing together for years.”
That was also true. But the reminder didn’t cut any ice with Trevor.
“The fact that you would force your way into our lives—”
“It was my life first!” I interrupted. “And I’m not forcing my way into anything. I paid for my ticket and I’m using it. Why the hell wouldn’t I? Why the hell would I pay that kind of money for a gift to Vance?”
It was Trevor’s turn to talk right over me. “Bad enough you wouldn’t give your ticket to him. But that you had the gall to use it. You don’t even like traveling. You hate traveling.”
At the far end of the hall, the elevator doors dinged and opened. A man in a tan trench coat stepped out, wheeling a suitcase behind him.
I lowered my voice. “I don’t hate traveling. I’ve never had a chance is all.”
Trevor’s face twisted in scorn. “That’s bull-pucky. How many times did I want to go away for the weekend or for vacation? You would never go. All you’ve ever cared about is your garden and your books.”
“I’d have loved to travel. We didn’t have the money!”
“That was always your excuse.”
It wasn’t like vacations abroad had ever been a big point of contention between us, and the unfairness of it stung. I protested, “It wasn’t an excuse. You weren’t working. We didn’t have the money.”
“We all know you’re just doing this to ruin my trip.”
We all? Meaning him and Vance? I said, “Believe it or not, my life doesn’t revolve around you anymore.”
He laughed in disbelief. Granted, it was a stagy laugh—Trevor was active in our local amateur theater and had received a lot of compliments for his Inspector Bullock 2 in Murder Afoot! “Since when? We both know you’re going to spend the entire trip spying on us and trying to make me feel guilty.”
“Spying on you?” I dropped my voice once more as I noticed the man in the trench coat—having disappeared down the hall and around the corner—was now headed back our way, still wheeling his suitcase. “You’re crazy!”
Trevor, as usual, was perfectly comfortable in front of an audience. “Are you going to pretend you weren’t watching us all through dinner?”
“I repeat, you’re crazy,” I said. “I wasn’t watching you. I don’t care what you do. I loved Vanessa way before you ever did.”
“I always loved Vanessa—” Trevor stopped and glared at the guy with the suitcase, who had halted at my door, making himself part of our little tableau.
My heart sank still further as I realized who he must be.
“Can I help you?” Trevor asked in his most forbidding tone.
Jesus, he could be such a prick. How had I not noticed that about him for so long? Or, rather, how had I convinced myself that the fact that he was a prick wasn’t important?
The newcomer—medium height, brown hair, brown eyes—seemed unaware of any tension. “I think this is my room,” he said.
“John Knight?” I said.
“That’s right.”
I offered my hand. “Carter Matheson.”
John had a firm grip. His hands were cold and rain dotted the shoulders of his trench coat. “Nice to meet you, Carter.” His voice was a pleasant baritone.
I nodded toward Trevor, who continued to glower. “This is Trevor Temple. He’s also on the tour.”
“Nice to meet you, Trevor.”
>
Trevor shook hands with the air of one who always dealt with unpleasant business first—which, by the way, was not, and never had been, his style.
I moved aside so John could wheel his suitcase into the room. “Not so bad,” he said with determined cheerfulness, glancing around the economy-sized cell.
“It’s a little cramped,” I agreed. “But we’re only here for the night. I took the bed nearest the window, but if you—”
“No, that’s fine. I prefer to be by the john.”
Bathroom issues, perhaps?
My uneasy speculation was interrupted by Trevor, who could never stand to be ignored for long. “This isn’t over,” he told me grimly.
I snorted and closed the door in his face.
John, his back to me, was busily unzipping his suitcase. “I was afraid you’d have already gone to bed.”
“No. Trevor and I were just...” I watched him pull out a brown leather kit bag and a brown plaid bathrobe, and asked instead, “How was your flight?”
He threw me a quick look and smiled. “Long.”
John wasn’t exactly handsome, though he had a nice smile and attractive, regular features. He looked to be in his late thirties, around my own age, which was a surprise since everyone else on the trip, with the exception of Trevor and Vance, was at least a decade older than me. I’d discovered Vanessa’s books in my twenties, so it had never occurred to me that her bus tours might lean toward an older demographic.
“Yeah. I’m from LA. I arrived this afternoon. It was a long trip.”
John made no response. I searched for something else to say. “I managed to read all of Wolverine on my flight,” I offered.
John nodded politely. “Okay if I use the john?”
“Sure. I’m all through in there.”
John vanished into the tiny bathroom and closed the door.
I climbed gingerly into my twin bed. I hadn’t slept in a bed this small since my college dormitory—which, come to think of it, was the last time I’d shared a room with someone I wasn’t planning to have sex with.
Setting the alarm on my phone, I wondered what John had made of the snatch of conversation with Trevor he’d undoubtedly overheard. Hopefully he hadn’t caught more than us squabbling over who loved Vanessa more. There would probably be a lot of that on this trip.