by Cole McCade
…pleading?
Malcolm didn’t understand, until—
“If you want me, he comes too,” Seong-Jae threw out in a venomous hiss.
“Um,” Malcolm said.
“No,” Joshi retorted, and Seong-Jae’s head snapped back toward Joshi, glare furious.
“He is my partner. We work better together. If you want me, you take him too.”
Joshi folded his arms over his chest, firming his stance and squaring his shoulders. “He doesn’t have clearance.”
“So get him clearance,” Seong-Jae seethed.
“He’s a liability,” Joshi countered. “And he’s not needed.”
“I’m standing right here,” Malcolm said out loud this time.
Seong-Jae’s jaw tightened. “He gets clearance,” he bit off, slow and precise, “or you do not get me.”
Joshi’s eyes narrowed, holding Seong-Jae’s gaze, that tension between them crackling, practically igniting—before with a sigh, he glanced at Anjulie.
“Captain Zarate y Salazar,” he said, almost lazily.
Oh, Mal thought. That’s not a very good idea.
And Anjulie held silent for several long moments, mouth pursing as she gave Joshi a long look that seemed to say I don’t work for you before she sighed and focused on Seong-Jae. “You’re still suspended. I could make this a mandatory stipulation of your job.”
Seong-Jae cocked a brow. “Do you want to test if I will quit? And do you really want to deal with Malcolm left at loose ends while I am participating in an inter-agency operation and unable to rein him in?”
Anjulie didn’t even hesitate. She swung her chair toward Joshi and said pointedly, “They’re a package deal. All or nothing.”
“Hey!” Mal protested. “Did I mention I’m standing right here?”
Joshi let out a controlled, patient exhalation, folding his hands before himself once more and shrugging. “I could make it an order. As far as authority goes, FBI division chiefs do take precedence over local departmental captains.”
“But you won’t,” Anjulie said.
Anjulie had a particular way of smiling that made Mal think of a hyena—and reminded him that hyenas were matriarchal. It was the females of the pack who ruled, who hunted, sharp and vicious and completely in control…and Anjulie had her hyena’s smile on, fierce and almost daring Joshi to try to challenge her in her own territory when she’d have his throat torn out and strewn across the floor before he could even blink.
“Because then,” she said around that smile and through teeth that seemed just a little sharper than usual, “I’ll file a formal complaint, and even coming from a lowly local departmental captain, that’s going to strain inter-agency relations significantly. Could cause problems on other joint cases when it comes to information access and freedom of movement. Isn’t there a pretty high-profile case hitting the news right now about a killer who escaped your jurisdiction and went on a cross-country spree all the way here? Aren’t a few of your people still here working that? Would be terribly embarrassing if you lost him…again.”
Joshi’s face turned to stone. He stared at her, hard, his voice ice. “You’re going to threaten me over one detective?”
Anjulie’s smile widened into a killing sickle. “Do you want to find out?”
Silence. Malcolm felt like the aura in the room was raising the hairs on the back of his neck and along his arms, pulling his skin too tight against his bones. Pulling him in too many directions, too, when suddenly everyone had a hand on him and was tugging him toward a slippery slope he’d never asked to fall down.
But then Joshi smiled, a humorless and grudging thing that was nonetheless tinged with a touch of respect. “They warned me you were a pain in the ass.”
“Clearly you didn’t listen,” Anjulie retorted.
Joshi acknowledged with a brief nod, before cocking his head. “All right, I’ll clear him.” His gaze flicked back to Malcolm, then, before he unclasped his hands and offered one. “Welcome to the case, Detective…?”
Well, fuck.
Malcolm guessed he was back on the job after all.
It would’ve been nice if someone had asked him.
But over Joshi’s head, Seong-Jae caught his gaze, and for all the simmering irritation turning black eyes into coals backlit by ember-fire and slashed across by that furiously intimidating scar, there was a touch of entreaty there, as well.
Seong-Jae didn’t want to go back to the BAU, Mal thought.
Back to that place that made him question his own sanity; that made him feel like he was the monster Sila had tried to make him.
At least…
Not alone.
And, with a nod, Malcolm clasped Joshi’s hand, shaking briefly. “Sergeant Detective Malcolm Khalaji.”
But Joshi clasped his hand a little longer than was necessary; there was no undue force in the grip, no threat display, but he held nonetheless, looking up at Malcolm thoughtfully.
“Khalaji,” he murmured. “Interesting.”
“Not particularly,” Malcolm said, and made a point of being the first one to let go. The first one to choose not to play this game.
He didn’t think he liked this Aanga Joshi.
Something more was going on here than just Seong-Jae’s old boss showing up to ask for his help on a case that, from Joshi’s implications, Seong-Jae would have jumped at in the past.
Joshi regarded him for a few more moments, lips curling thoughtfully, before he turned away briskly and smoothed a hand over the neat gloss of his hair. “It seems I’ve got to make some adjustments to travel arrangements and take care of some paperwork, so I’ll have everything relevant sent to your office by courier by tomorrow morning.” His gaze slid to Seong-Jae. “Our flight leaves at ten forty AM tomorrow. I suggest you pack.”
“I refuse to wear a suit again,” Seong-Jae muttered.
Joshi smirked. “But you look so good in one.”
Malcolm’s eye twitched.
There it was.
But Seong-Jae just remained rigid, wordless, just looking at Joshi as if the man stood attendant at the gates to hell.
Mal gave in to the urge to step closer to Seong-Jae—if only so his boyfriend wouldn’t combust in place, angling himself subtly as a shield. “Does anyone want to tell me about this case?”
“Not until you have clearance,” Joshi said, shrugging and turning with a smart, quick step toward the door. “Which I now have to go take care of. You’ll be briefed on the ground in Arizona.”
“Arizona?” Malcolm said.
But Joshi was already walking out, only the briskness of his stride masking the irritation set through his body in taut lines.
And a soft whistle drifting back over his shoulder, something that sounded like a child’s nursery rhyme.
No one said anything, as the door closed.
And Malcolm wondered what the hell he had just gotten dragged into.
Anjulie broke the silence with a sigh, smacking her head back against her chair. “…I fucking hate feds.”
Malcolm smirked. “Nice bluff.”
“Worked, didn’t it?” She skewered him with a look. “I can’t really afford to go to war and hold up multiple other investigations just on a point of pride over you, though. So try to behave yourself on this case.”
“When do I not behave myself?” Malcolm asked—only for Seong-Jae’s stillness to break as his head swiveled toward Malcolm and he narrowed his eyes. Mal huffed. “Stop looking at me like that,” he said, only for Anjulie to arch a skeptical brow. “Both of you.”
Seong-Jae made a soft, helpless clicking sound in the back of his throat and looked away, dragging a hand through his hair. “I am sorry,” he said, shoulders slumping. “I pulled you into this, I…”
Malcolm stepped closer, resting a hand to Seong-Jae’s arm. “It’s okay. It wasn’t hard to see you needed me.”
With a disgusted noise, Anjulie levered herself to her feed with a sharp, kicking motion, adjusting the
lapels of her neatly pressed white blouse. “You can use my office to talk. I’ll get you cleared for active duty by tomorrow morning. You can pick up your badges and service pistols on the way to the airport.” She strode past them, but paused as she passed shoulder to shoulder with Mal. “This doesn’t mean you’re forgiven.”
He was tempted to say something flippant, something sardonic…but there was a heaviness to Anjulie, something that made the shadows under her eyes darker, the set of her mouth just a touch more haunted, sad, overwhelming the traces of brittle, exhausted anger leaving lines around her mouth and making her jaw tight.
He couldn’t laugh, when he knew…
He’d made the weight she carried that much heavier, just because he hadn’t trusted her with his suspicions, his questions.
So he only nodded, accepting. There was nothing else he could do. “I know.”
She just gave him another long look, before turning and walking out.
The moment the door closed…
Seong-Jae practically collapsed into his arms.
Malcolm caught that heavy, boneless weight, wrapping his arms around him tightly and stepping back until they weren’t so easily visible through the glass from the homicide bullpen.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey—what the hell just happened?”
Seong-Jae didn’t answer for several moments, but his arms wrapped hard around Malcolm, crushingly so, and his fingers dug into the back of Malcolm’s suit coat.
“An old case,” he murmured, voice muffled against Malcolm’s shoulder. “It was not even mine, but…when I was a junior agent I was reviewing old case files simply to sharpen my skills when I noticed a pattern that had not been detected before in a particularly grisly serial murder case. The suspect was unidentified and had been dormant for over ten years, and was presumed either dead or fully retired. The information I provided helped to complete a psychological profile, but did not help to identify and capture the perpetrator…but now it would appear he has returned. I…I am sorry, I cannot give you more details until…”
“Clearance. I know, love. I know.”
“Ah.”
There was a certain way about Seong-Jae when he was upset, and trying not to be. While at work he was often so intently focused that he recited information in a dispassionate deadpan, wholly immersed in the facts of a case and unraveling the details of a suspect’s psyche…but there was a certain flat way of speaking, a certain tendency to break his silence with more words than were needed, that told anyone who knew him—who loved him—that he was trying to both smother his emotions and bury them under volumes of clinical data.
Which meant they were only cutting him that much deeper.
And Malcolm held him that much tighter, slipping a hand up to weave into the soft tufts of hair at the nape of Seong-Jae’s neck, slipping beneath the collar of the leather racing jacket.
“Is this case one of the ones that frightened you?” he asked. “The ones that made you fear being inside the suspect’s head…and being like them.”
“No,” Seong-Jae whispered, and the hard digging grip of his fingers turned painful, desperate. “This was one of the cases that taught me how depraved human beings can truly be…and made me fear anyone who could do such things.”
C
SEONG-JAE LAY IN BED, LISTENED to the sound of Malcolm’s sleeping breaths, and tried not to remember.
It had been nothing but photographs. Photographs and one terrible video, but some things did not have to be witnessed firsthand to burn themselves into mind and heart and soul.
Lines carved in skin.
Body parts rearranged, flesh sliced away in delicate cross-section layers.
And the singing, soft and low and filtered through a rubber mask, a merry sweet childlike thing that floated over the captured security footage and lent a surreal air of nightmare strangeness to the entire scene.
While a man in a white rabbit mask and nondescript dark jumpsuit slowly dissected and rearranged people’s bodies according to some mad design, working as happily as if he were pottering around in his backyard garden.
And now he was back.
Which meant this time the bodies would be real, the scent of settling meat and old blood, the particular stink of terror that came with dying while your body fell apart in pieces.
And Aanga had come spiriting into Seong-Jae’s life to drag him back into that.
While Seong-Jae had latched on to Malcolm and pulled him over the precipice and into the dark with him.
He rolled over on his side, shifting quietly, and watched the dim light of the moon play over Malcolm’s face, the wild mane tumbled across the bed, the thickly rounded musculature of his bare shoulders—catching in little arcs of light on the hairs of his beard, his thickly furred chest, the paler skin of the scar on his throat, the dark ink of the Army tattoo on his bicep, the smoother line of the scar tracking down his temple, through his eyelid, onto his cheek. Right now, with the moving boxes stacked in walls all around the bed, Seong-Jae felt like they were walled into a safe little bubble, the only reminder of what was coming the suitcases waiting just inside the ring of boxes, hastily packed.
I am sorry, he thought. I am sorry for dragging you down into my darkness once again.
Biting his lip, he edged closer, then slid down to insinuate himself under the heavy weight of Malcolm’s arm, using his shoulders to make room for himself. Malcolm stirred with a soft snort, shifting drowsily, then opened one hazy slate blue eye.
“…nnh?” he slurred sleepily. “Omr-an? Something wrong?”
“No,” Seong-Jae said, and just burrowed against Malcolm’s chest. “Simply hold me. That is all.”
Malcolm yawned, before that burly arm tightened around Seong-Jae, gathering him in while Malcolm buried his face in Seong-Jae’s hair, enveloping Seong-Jae in the heat of sinew as hard and safe and protective as walls of sun-warmed stone. “Sure, love,” he sighed, and Seong-Jae wondered still, as he had so many times, how Malcolm could so easily accept all his strangeness and his whims without question. “Anything you need.”
[3: DO WHAT YOU DO]
MALCOLM DIDN’T KNOW HOW HE felt about the weights of the badge in his pocket, of the Glocks in their shoulder holsters, of the folder in his hand.
All three only seemed to make him ten times heavier.
He stood across from Seong-Jae and Aanga Joshi at their gate at Baltimore/Washington International, ignoring the bustle and noise of the busy airport around them, and thumbed through the pages in the thin unlabeled manila folder. Details about his clearance level, what he didn’t have access to, what he did.
Not much, really, but it mostly gave Joshi and Seong-Jae permission to talk about case details in front of him, and gave Joshi the ability to badge them through security without more than a cursory glance at their service pistols—though Seong-Jae had been forced to reluctantly turn over his brass knuckles and that pocket knife he always seemed to have hidden on him somewhere, grudgingly agreeing to stow them in his bag and giving consent for a quick pat-down that left him with that vaguely glassy, highly murderous look Malcolm knew so well.
Malcolm, on the other hand, didn’t recall giving consent for a background check despite agreeing to this entire fucking mess.
And neither of the men in front of him were being particularly forthcoming, at the moment.
In fact, Seong-Jae had barely said a word since they’d left the office to pack, yesterday—and he’d been silent this morning as Anjulie turned over their badges and guns and told them to fucking behave themselves while they were representing the BPD out in the wider world.
At the moment, Seong-Jae was pointedly not looking at anyone. Not Joshi, not Malcolm, his gaze trained toward the broad windows looking out over the tarmac, hands in the pockets of his jacket, standing just far away enough from both of them to detach himself, his carry-on—a completely mangled roller that looked it had been put through a wood chipper half a dozen times, unearthed after ripping open ove
r a dozen boxes last night—propped against his leg.
Don’t, Malcolm thought, fighting down the sense of dread building deep in his chest, this heavy congealed thing like some dark, awful ooze. Don’t shut away.
Everything had been so perfect, these past two months.
And while he’d known, sooner or later, they’d have to go back to work…
He hadn’t expected it would be like this.
Thrust into something Seong-Jae didn’t want, that made him shut down and wall himself off with that particular blankness around his eyes, that strangeness that made him seem so far away and utterly untouchable.
Don’t go away from me again.
“So,” Joshi said. “Do you have any questions?”
“Not at the moment.” Malcolm closed the file. “This isn’t very enlightening about the case.”
“I wasn’t expecting to have to brief someone new.” Joshi slipped a hand into the pocket of his suit and withdrew a small thumbdrive, proffering it. “Had this properly cleared and transferred over this morning for your benefit. Prior case files; nothing on the new case, as the locals won’t release the security footage until we’re on the ground and there in person. If you brought a laptop or tablet with you, you can review on the flight.”
Something about the way he said for your benefit set Malcolm’s teeth on edge.
But he kept his mouth shut, offered a tight smile, and took the drive, tucking it into his breast pocket.
Joshi just kept looking at him, his expression calm, controlled, pleasant.
Malcolm still didn’t like it.
But he glanced up as the call went out for their gate, and boarding. Seong-Jae finally moved, lifting his head, his eyes focusing as he glanced toward Malcolm and Joshi as if just remembering they were there.
Joshi cocked his head at Seong-Jae, then smirked. “Rough night?”
Seong-Jae’s eyes narrowed. “Do not,” he said tonelessly, and Joshi leaned closer to him with a familiarity that had Malcolm’s palms itching to pull him back out of Seong-Jae’s space.