Truth and Consequences

by Sarah Madison

  “You boys need to run along now.” She spoke with a quiet kind of menace, and it flipped a switch in my brain, reminding me of times I’d heard John speak in that same silky tone.

  The men in the masks held up their hands in a show of peace, then turned tail and dove back into their car. The ignition made a grinding noise as the driver tried to start the already running engine. Then he threw the car into reverse and spun it around in the parking lot, once it was clear of Jean’s car. They sped off with a roar, while I took note of the license plate. The numbers were partially obscured by mud. Deliberately, no doubt.

  “Holy shit.” Richard was eloquent, if nothing else. “Should I call 911?”

  “Oh dear.” Jean lowered her weapon. Her voice was just the slightest bit shaky. “I think not. It’s been a long day, and I’m sure Lee just wants to get home. Besides, my son and I don’t see eye to eye on my carrying a gun with me everywhere I go.”

  “Can I get you anything? A coffee? Anything?” Richard was anxious to be of assistance, but Jean was right. I only wanted to go home.

  We reassured Richard we’d still come back for the class, and left him in a flutter of admiration and alarm.

  “You won’t mention this to John, will you, dear?” Jean seemed just the slightest bit uncertain. “He really has a foolish anxiety about me carrying a gun. Which is silly, as I have a permit, you know.”

  I thought of the antique weapon Jean had leveled at my would-be assailants, and John’s likely reaction to his mother threatening anyone with a gun. The humor of the situation got to me just then. The acorn didn’t fall very far from the oak. “Do you have a concealed weapons permit?”

  “It wasn’t concealed.” She spoke with the firmness of someone who’d made the argument before. “My permit allows me to carry it in my car, and as you can attest, it never left the car. Richmond is such a dangerous town.” She shook her head sadly, her attention on the road.

  “I think you’re really supposed to have a concealed-weapons permit to carry your gun around with you everywhere you go.” I deliberately kept my tone mild. After all, she was armed.

  “Oh pooh,” she said, which was obviously the strongest expletive she could come up with.

  I had to control the urge to giggle helplessly.

  The brain is a weird thing. The image of me and John standing in the light of a single bulb at the rear entrance of a bar suddenly sprang to mind. We were knocking at the door, asking for admittance, but we didn’t know what we’d find on the other side. That much came through clearly—the adrenaline of having tracked down our quarry, the knowledge that John was going to get some answers, at long last. I recalled the moment in the car when we first arrived at Jean’s, where John told me we’d found his sister’s murderer but had no proof. I knew that the memory took place at the moment we’d been about to solve that cold case.

  John, naturally, had brought a gun with him. I chided him for bringing a weapon along for what had been an outing among friends, asking him if he always met his old classmates for drinks with a gun in his pocket.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” he’d said with that little smirk of his.

  Only it hadn’t been him I was looking at. It was my own face staring back at me.

  Impossible, I thought with a snort. Obviously I needed to lie down for a while, if my memory was going to play tricks on me. Only I didn’t want to lie down, at least, not like that. I had plans, damn it. I also knew John would be pissed if I involved his mother in a police report, especially when she’d pulled a weapon. With no license plate, I knew there was little to go on. It would be a waste of time at best, and another headache for John, at worst. Best I just sit on it. I’d still have to tell him, though, no matter how hard Jean begged me to keep it just between the two of us.

  Just not yet. Not that night.

  Chapter Five

  “WHAT HAPPENED to you?” I asked when John came through the door that evening.

  He had a bright, mischievous look about him, a sort of feigned innocence that went well with the cut just above his eyebrow and the tie askew. His pants were torn over one knee, and his jacket had streaks of mud on it.

  “Nothing. Why do you ask?”

  I gave him my best dirty look. The one that said he wasn’t fooling me.

  In return, John gave me Smile Number Three, which was so full of boyish charm, I was supposed to forget what the original question was. Hah. I was done with forgetting things.

  He gave his lopsided shrug. “Things were a little rough at work today.”

  “You don’t say.” I tipped my head at him. “I thought you were on administrative leave?”

  “We had a case that needed some on-site investigation. I had to tackle one of the suspects who insisted on fleeing the scene. It was no big deal.” His look of excitement was fading, as though I’d thrown water on his fire.

  “Uh-huh. Tell it to the Board of Inquiry. I thought you were on desk duty, anyway.”

  “What have you been up to?” Obviously, he’d decided to deflect the conversation back on me.

  “Oh, nothing much. A little shopping with your mom.”

  He’d been in the act of shrugging out of his jacket when suddenly his head whipped around toward me. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Damn. It was creepy how he could do that. I wasn’t ready to tell him about the events of the afternoon, however. I didn’t want to spoil my plans for the evening. Without waiting for my response, he lifted his head and called out, “Mo-ther!” Actually, “bellowed” would be the more appropriate term.

  A little redirection seemed in order.

  “She’s not here. Dinner with Charles. She said not to wait up.”

  He looked at me as if I were spouting Greek, staring with a faint look of incomprehension that was kind of cute.

  “You know,” I added. “As in she’s planning to make a night of it.”

  John winced and screwed his eyes shut, as if to keep out an unwanted vision. With a small shudder, he growled, “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Righto.”

  He shot me a look, but I met his gaze with supreme innocence. Two could play that game. Raising an eyebrow at me, he seemed to decide to let it go and climbed the stairs toward the bathroom.

  I went downstairs and fed the cats. When I came back to the living room, I had just enough time to leave my handwritten note in its envelope on the mantelpiece before the guy from the rental place showed up to take me to my loaner car. I let myself out of the house, carrying a change of clothes in a small bag and my laptop, to shake hands with the rental guy. I was excited, nervous, and a little apprehensive, all at once. I only hoped John would take the bait.

  I’d done a little research when I got back from our shopping spree. I wasn’t sure I was going to go through with the plans that had been teasing me all afternoon, but I decided I couldn’t always rely on Mrs. F for transportation. A quick check of my bank balance online told me that, other than some expensive tastes in clothing and home furnishings, I tended not to spend much. Renting a car, at least temporarily, made sense. Renting a luxury car had not, but hey, it was my money to burn. John’s expectant, lit-up expression when he walked in the door prompted me to make a decision. So excitement was what he craved, eh? I could do excitement.

  I only hoped he’d follow the directions I left in the note.

  A black Lincoln MKZ was the closest I could come to a sports car through the agency. I felt wild and reckless when I got behind the wheel. Well, I suspect it was reckless for me. It was kind of a rush, to be honest. For the first time in memory—which is saying something—I felt in control, powerful, even sexy, damn it. No wonder people bought those cars. I drove with panache through Richmond and out to Carytown, conscious of appraising stares from men and women alike at stoplights. It was a wonderful feeling. I put on my sunglasses and practiced my best James Bond look.

  Out by the Fan district, I found the Cockwalk, which, according to Google, was gay-friendly. Parkin
g for the restaurant was a bitch, but it was only to be expected. I’d changed clothes at the rental place and was dressed for a night out in clothing that still bore the creases of their packaging. I only hoped the dash of Invictus cologne would outweigh the odor of new, unwashed clothing. Still, I had to make do with what I had, right?

  I walked into the bar like I owned it. Perhaps I did. All those years of theater in high school and college came back to me, and besides, clothing makes the man, right? Tucking my sunglasses into the collar of my shirt, I noted with satisfaction the glances in my direction as I took my seat at the bar and waited. In that moment, I knew I was worthy of the attention of someone like John Flynn.

  I only hoped he felt the same way.

  I ordered a whiskey sour with Crown Royal and sipped it while I waited. It was relatively early, but there were a few customers, mostly at tables, eating burgers. The smell of grilled meat was mouthwatering, but that wasn’t the meat I was after. The first contender of the evening slipped into the seat next to me.

  “Hey.” His smile was engaging and hopeful. He was younger than me by at least five or six years, which was flattering, to say the least. “How’d you break your arm?”

  As a conversation starter, it wasn’t half-bad. I looked at the guy and revised his age down a few more years. Grad student, most likely. Probably from VCU, seeing as it was so close. Hair overly long and flopping into his eyes. Cute. Lean too—probably from living off ramen noodles and biking everywhere. My cock stirred as I assessed him, but he wasn’t the one I wanted. “Bad day at work.” I smiled, hoping to take the sting out of the coming rejection.

  “Ouch.” He grabbed a few pretzels from the dish on the bar but didn’t eat any of them. “So, I haven’t seen you around here before. Is this your first time here?”

  “I’m only in town for a little while,” I said, making sure I sounded regretful. “I’m meeting someone,” I added.

  He nodded, as though it was inevitable, and it made me feel… wanted. Knowing that he took my unavailability for granted was inexplicably gratifying.

  “Lucky someone.” His smile was rueful. “Can I sign your cast?”

  “Sure.” Why not? I watched with interest as he pulled a Sharpie out of his pocket.

  “I work in a lab on campus,” he said, without explaining which campus he meant.

  I laughed when I saw that he’d written his phone number on my cast. “I might have a hard time explaining that to my boyfriend,” I said when he was done.

  He capped the pen and tucked it back in his pocket, then leaned forward to brush his lips across my ear. “I certainly hope so.”

  I smiled back at him as he left the counter. He waggled his fingers at me and retreated toward the far end of the room, and I turned back to my glass, still smiling as I took another sip.

  I knew the moment John walked into the bar. It was like my sonar pinged, my radar lit up—you name it. I heard the door open, and without turning around, I knew it was him because the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Because something in my gut tightened, and my cock lifted in earnest. I watched him in the mirror as he scanned the room, locked in on my presence, and stalked toward me like a panther in a pen full of sheep. Everyone else in the room was aware of him as well. I practically preened when he came up beside me. He took a seat and signaled the bartender, who came over with flattering attention.

  He ordered his drink, a plain ginger ale, and finally spoke. “Fancy meeting you here.” He took off his aviators and pocketed the frames.

  “I see you got my message.”

  “Message? More like cryptic code. ‘I’m going out. Meet me if you like. I’m hoping you’ll join me.’ You didn’t leave me much to go on.”

  I took another swallow of the tart lemonade and whiskey and placed it on the counter. “I had to be discreet. I have a boyfriend. Besides, you figured it out easy enough.”

  “I’m a trained FBI agent. I see you haven’t wasted time taking numbers.” He indicated the black scrawl on my cast with a short nod of his head. “Besides, you left a magazine open to an ad for this bar, with the address circled in red. You could have waited for me, you know.” He sounded just the slightest bit hurt, but I wasn’t going to be taken in so easily.

  “It was more fun this way. As for phone numbers, there’s only one I’d call.” I met his gaze through the reflection in the mirror behind the bar. I saw his pupils dilate and his nostrils flare, and I felt my own breathing increase in response. Deliberately, I turned away and took another sip from my glass. “I see you found the clothes.”

  He took the jacket he was wearing by the lapels and pulled it out slightly from his body. “This? I didn’t have much choice. My only other suit apparently went to the cleaners today, and I’d trashed the one I was in.”

  I smiled into my glass. The clothes I’d picked out suited him, as I knew they would—a dark charcoal linen jacket that he’d already managed to rumple, a paler gray cotton shirt beneath that he’d left untucked, and blue jeans that were fashionably distressed. The boots I’d chosen for him were a combination hiker/running shoe that I knew he could wear back home, even if we never made it to Halifax.

  I was determined we never would. I didn’t need to go back to my hometown to realize I’d shaken the dust of it off my feet a long time ago.

  He’d showered but not shaved. Well, I guess twice in one day would be a bit much. As he reached for the pretzels, I could see the dark shadow of stubble and wondered how that would feel against my skin. I was planning to find out.

  He pulled the entire bowl of pretzels toward him and grabbed a handful. “Sorry,” he said with Smile Number Three again. “I’m starving.”

  I’d been thinking about having dinner at the bar, but it occurred to me that the place would soon be crowded with noisy college students looking to blow off steam on a Friday night. Not the ambience I was looking for. Besides, wasn’t that what room service was for?

  He stopped in the act of raising the handful of pretzels to his mouth. “You got a room.” The way he said it, with his eyes half-closed and the throaty growl in his voice made it a statement, not a question. He tipped his head to one side, as though listening to something. “You got a really nice room.”

  “How’d you guess?” I was just a little bit peeved. I didn’t like having my surprise spoiled.

  He chewed thoughtfully on the pretzels and washed them down with the ginger ale. Then he tapped his temple with one finger. “Trained investigator.”

  Hah. Investigate this. I swiveled the bar stool around so I was facing him, let my thighs fall open, and placed one foot on the floor, so he could see the full length of my cock pressing against my fly. I took a pretzel from him and popped it in my mouth. “Yes. I got a room. At the Alexander.” The conversation we’d had in the car on the way to his mother’s house burned in my memory. So he wanted to pretend we’d just met, did he? Well, he was about to find out that, on occasion, I liked a one-night stand. I finished my drink, took a twenty out of my wallet, and left it on the counter. “I’m headed there now.”

  “Hey, wait up!”

  I ignored John and continued walking toward the door. The grad student from before gave me a subtle thumbs-up, and I gave him a small nod in response. Outside, the sun was setting, throwing long shadows among the squat downtown buildings—many of which looked like old converted factories—and the occasional ornate-but-elderly church wedged in between. I’d parked in the small lot behind the bar, and I went down the narrow alleyway to reach it.

  “Jerry Lee, don’t be pissed with me.” John spoke in a kind of singsong fashion, two steps behind me. I could hear the amusement in his voice. When he caught me by the arm, I turned and pushed into his body, thrusting us both against the wall. Hard.

  “I’m not pissed,” I said softly. “I just wanted to surprise you.”

  “You’ve spent a month’s paycheck today. Color me surprised. You don’t have to do this to try and impress me, Lee.”

  “I’m
not—”

  He cut me off. “Or woo me, or whatever. We’re cool, right?”

  I got Smile Number Three again, and I didn’t want Smile Number Three, damn it. I wanted Smile Number Two. Hell, I wanted Smile Number One, and I wasn’t even sure what that looked like. “You might be cool with things the way they are. I’m not.”

  I kissed him. I kissed the hell out of him. It started off angry and got a whole lot of hungry. Before I knew it, I was grinding up against him, his face in my hands as I kissed the ever-living hell out of him. He inhaled sharply and kissed me back. He smelled of Irish Spring, which made me laugh inside at the appropriateness of it, and the indefinable but completely recognizable scent that was simply Flynn. I would have known that scent anywhere. I wanted more. I wanted all of him.

  The feeling was apparently mutual. Flynn tugged at my shirt, pulling it out of my waistband so his hands could explore my skin beneath it.

  When I released him, his lips, always generous, were slightly swollen. I pushed myself off him, dropping my chin as I spoke. My voice was whiskey raw, like I’d downed the entire bottle, instead of a glass, or had spent the last decade in a smoke-filled bar. “I’m going to the hotel now. Follow me.”

  His nostrils flared, and something sparked inside me as well. That got his attention. Well, well. I took a step closer, cupped the back of his head, and pulled him in for another kiss. “Don’t keep me waiting.” I let him go and walked off without a backward glance.

  I was able to maintain that macho persona all the way to the car, where I started the ignition with a throaty roar, and peeled out of the lot as John stood watching me. I think he didn’t know what to make of me. The look on his face was certainly promising. Intense, tracking my movement like a hunting dog following its prey. It wouldn’t hurt him to have to chase after me a bit. Might even do him some good. Hey, Agent Flynn. Come get your man.

  I let the powerful car buoy my self-image: someone who knew what he wanted and was about to get it. I didn’t think too much about the way I was acting or how Flynn was responding. If even the slightest hint of the ridiculousness of my behavior crept into my thoughts, I was doomed.