by Cole McCade
“I can think of a few better reasons for you to be so—”
He didn’t get to finish.
Not when Seong-Jae slipped a hand from his pocket, flattened his palm right against Joshi’s face, and shoved him back the full length of Seong-Jae’s arm with absolutely no uncertainty.
While Seong-Jae’s other hand snapped out, pointing at Malcolm. “Boyfriend,” he clipped out in a low growl, one fiercely dashed eyebrow twitching spasmodically, the vein above practically ticking.
Joshi rocked back, tossing his head like a fractious horse until he shook Seong-Jae’s hand free, then made a disgusted sound and pulled his glasses off. They were marked with smudged fingerprints all across the lenses, and with a sigh he tugged a gray silk handkerchief from his pocket, using it to scrub at his glasses and flicking an annoyed look between Malcolm and Seong-Jae.
“I wish you’d told me that before I’d granted his clearance.”
Malcolm arched a brow, struggling to keep the irritable edge from his voice. What the fuck? “Is there something I should know about?”
Seong-Jae hesitated…then jerked his chin toward Joshi. “Ex-boyfriend,” he muttered grudgingly, before his gaze darted away, back toward the windows, fixed and blank.
A groan escaped, one that felt like it was pulled up from the depths of Malcolm’s bowels. “…I wish you’d told me that before I got clearance.”
Khaak too saret—he just—he fucking—
Another one of Seong-Jae’s ex-boyfriends crawling out of the woodwork.
Malcolm just hoped this one didn’t intend to try to fucking kill him.
From the way Joshi was looking at him, though—long and assessing—he was definitely taking Malcolm’s measure.
And Malcolm wasn’t here for posturing games with someone who thought flashing his rank would get him anything and everything he wanted.
He said nothing as Joshi eyed him, still working at his glasses, before Joshi just smiled, sliding them back on and pushing the frames up his nose neatly before tucking the handkerchief into his pocket again.
“Well then,” he said, almost cheerful—too cheerful. “We’ll just all have to try to get along, won’t we?”
“I suppose we will,” Malcolm said carefully, while Seong-Jae closed his eyes, breathing out slowly through flared nostrils and tilting his head back toward the ceiling.
“…fuck my life.”
Joshi raised both brows mildly. “If this is a problem…”
“No,” Seong-Jae said sharply. “No, we are not having this conversation, both of you just get on the fucking plane.”
Malcolm blinked at Joshi. Joshi blinked back at him, then shrugged, sweeping a bow and gesturing.
“I suppose, Detective Khalaji,” he said, “we should get on the fucking plane.”
“Indeed we should, SSA Joshi.”
“I do not want the two of you to get along,” Seong-Jae snarled, then whipped about on his heel and turned to stalk off, dragging his roller suitcase behind, the uneven wheels making it bump and sway as jerkily as his stiff shoulders.
Tilting his head, Malcolm glanced at Joshi. “Are we getting along?”
“Not yet,” Joshi answered mildly. “But I think we may have just made a common enemy.”
Yeah, Malcolm thought as he hefted his carry-on over his shoulder and turned to follow Seong-Jae, and he wasn’t exactly proud of the ripple of territorial aggravation running through his thoughts and making the back of his neck prickle. But at the end of the day…that common enemy’s going home with me.
C
SEONG-JAE THOUGHT HE FINALLY KNEW the true definition of hell.
And it was standing in front of the curtain separating first class from coach, ticket in hand, looking over his ex-boyfriend’s head at his current boyfriend’s pointedly calm, neutral smile while said ex-boyfriend shrugged with a casual, self-effacing remorse that made Seong-Jae want to claw that little smirk off Aanga Joshi’s face.
Did you come to fetch me for the case, or for something else, you ass?
If he said anything, he would end up saying far too many things, and quite vituperatively.
And so he ground his teeth and kept his mouth shut, while Aanga spread his hands and said, “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting a tagalong. They’re booked up in first class. It’s a miracle we could even get you a ticket on this flight.”
Was Aanga trying to bait Malcolm?
It did not make sense.
Not for the man that Seong-Jae had known—even if, when they had met, Seong-Jae had been younger, more impressionable.
Aanga had always been affable, gentle, quietly understanding with a touch of a sardonic undertone. It had been that understanding that had attracted Seong-Jae, he thought, when he had felt so much out of place and wondered if anyone would finally realize the imposter he was, pretending to be whole and clean and pure and good when his entire body was riddled with black-veined poison.
Perhaps sometimes Aanga could be a pain in the ass.
But this smiling toothiness, this odd edge…
This was new.
And Seong-Jae thought he just might kill him.
But Malcolm did not rise to the bait, remaining neutral, his body language rather deliberately relaxed as if handling a live snake and quite aware of exactly what he needed to do to keep it calm and avoid a bite.
“I’m fine with coach,” Malcolm said, shrugging and adjusting the shoulder strap of his weathered leather satchel. “I’ll see you two on the ground in Phoenix.”
“Of course,” Aanga answered brightly. “You don’t get airsick, do you?”
“I promise,” Malcolm said. “I’ll be fine.”
And for a moment he caught Seong-Jae’s eye over Aanga’s head.
…and winked, fucking devil of a wolf that he was, completely unrattled.
Seong-Jae did not know if he wanted to kiss him or kill him, but he managed a faint hint of a smile before Malcolm flicked his fingers in a half-salute and turned to edge a body that was far too thick for the narrow aisle back down to find his seat, slate blue eyes scanning the numbers and letters over each row.
Aanga glanced at Seong-Jae. When Seong-Jae looked at him flatly, Aanga asked “What?” with feigned innocence, before slipping around him and into the first class section.
Seong-Jae followed him reluctantly—but when Aanga settled into one of the two luxury bucket seats arranged facing each other in a private seating area, looking far too self-satisfied as he crossed his legs…
Something in Seong-Jae snapped, a brittle thread of irritation pulled just a little too tight.
And he stopped where he stood, balking, glaring down at Aanga.
“Are you done being passive-aggressive?” he bit off.
“I’m not being anything.” Aanga arched his brows, folding his hands coolly and bracing them against his knee. “It’s a simple truth of the matter. I only expected to return with you, and first class tickets were booked for last minute flights. Even getting him in coach was an extra expense.”
Seong-Jae just looked at him.
Then turned around and walked away.
Fuck this.
“Seong-Jae?” drifted after him. “Where are you going?”
Seong-Jae did not answer.
He simply shoved the curtain barring coach from first class aside, and stalked down the aisle to find his omr-an.
C
MALCOLM HAD JUST SETTLED INTO a rather narrow aisle seat next to his seatmate—a willowy man in a seersucker suit, his only carry-on a briefcase—when an ominously dark shadow fell across their row.
“Hello,” Seong-Jae said, his voice almost too silken, too soft, something cutting in its gentle inflections.
And when Malcolm looked up, he nearly shivered at the smile on Seong-Jae’s full, berry-red lips.
Sweet.
Calm.
Utterly carnivorous.
And focused entirely on Malcolm’s seatmate, pinning the man with a stark, unblinking black stare
as reflective as a spider’s, and just as unnerving.
The man in the seersucker suit just blinked, recoiling until his shoulder and back pressed against Malcolm’s arm, staring owlishly at Seong-Jae through his glasses.
“H-hello…?”
Seong-Jae cocked his head, crowlike, a sort of darkly menacing inquisitiveness at once pleasant and entirely fucking creepy. “I think you would very much like to trade seats with me,” he said, slow and precise. “In first class.” His smile widened, but didn’t reflect in his eyes; it only bared his teeth, which—with his tall, broad-shouldered body blocking off the light—looked almost ominously sharp in the shadows. “I think you would like that very much.”
Malcolm fought not to grin.
Seong-Jae was an asshole.
And he shouldn’t find it so damned hot when he did things like that.
The man in the seersucker suit blinked again, his face just a touch paler, making the shadow of his stubble jump out in stark dots. “Um. What?”
“I said,” Seong-Jae repeated, slower, more firmly, a subtle growl in his voice, “I think you would like to trade seats with me. In. First. Class.”
Seong-Jae slipped his hand inside his coat and retrieved his badge, flipping it open, flashing it like a weapon, the edges glinting in the low light.
“Um.” It took only one more flustered second for the man to nod, bobbing his head quickly and gathering up his briefcase “S-sure. Just tell me the seat number.”
Seong-Jae inclined his head, his smile turning acid. “Thank you.”
“N-no…no p-problem.”
It took less than sixty seconds for the man to scramble upright in a scrape of his slacks against the knit weave of the seat, clutching his briefcase against his chest like a shield against Seong-Jae’s drilling gaze, edging around Seong-Jae as if he was too sharp-edged to touch. A few murmurs and he’d vanished down the aisle, nearly scrambling behind the curtain to first class.
The second he was gone, Seong-Jae’s smile dropped, replaced by a scowl that brought the crackle of life back to his eyes. Hissing under his breath, cursing in soft Korean, he stuffed his badge back into his coat and hefted his carry-on up in a single jerk of easy strength, shoving it into the overhead bin before flinging himself down sulkily into the seat next to Malcolm, folding his arms over his chest.
Malcolm lofted a brow, watching him, and just couldn’t stop himself from smiling any longer. “That was a cruel thing to do to a civilian. Did you enjoy that?”
“Yes,” Seong-Jae hissed, and shot him a sullen look; Malcolm laughed.
“Good.” He slipped an arm around Seong-Jae’s shoulders and dragged him closer. “Get over here.”
Seong-Jae went boneless against him, mumbling under his breath but coming willingly, slouching down. Malcolm nuzzled into his hair, breathing in his scent. Adelaide must have one hell of a nose, because all Malcolm could smell was Seong-Jae, and the sweet-musky scent of the argan oil shampoo Seong-Jae always seemed to steal from Malcolm’s shelf while Seong-Jae’s own remained untouched, the volume in the bottle never changing.
“Still an inappropriate use of your badge, love,” he murmured.
And he didn’t give a damn.
Not when Seong-Jae had made the choice to be here, with him, instead of following protocol.
“I do not care,” Seong-Jae grumbled. “I was not spending a five-hour flight alone with him.”
Malcolm snorted. “Ex-boyfriend, huh?”
Seong-Jae’s body went tense in his arms. “I do not want to talk about it right now.”
With a sigh, Malcolm let it drop. “Okay,” he said…but he wasn’t sure how okay it really was. If he was being paranoid, or if Seong-Jae was hiding things from him again.
It was those phone calls.
Those late-night phone calls, and wondering if Joshi had been on the other end; wondering if Sila had been all Seong-Jae was hiding.
But Malcolm moved on with, “Do you want to talk about the case, then?”
Seong-Jae made a grudging sound. “Your laptop. And keep your voice down.”
Malcolm reluctantly let Seong-Jae go so he could lean forward and drag his carry-on out from under the seat. He didn’t have much inside, just a few essentials, a couple of changes of clothing, plus a few books and his laptop, and he pulled the slim silver HP out with a little wrestling in the limited space between his legs before pulling the seat tray down and settling the laptop, flipping it open, and hitting the power button.
The entire time, Seong-Jae watched him with a strange, fixed expression, almost deliberately blank—as if he was dreading every mundane gesture that brought Malcolm another step closer to unearthing whatever was hidden in that thumbdrive. Malcolm pretended not to notice, when it would only make Seong-Jae slam down on him; he knew his boyfriend’s patterns, and even if Seong-Jae was working on it…
Sometimes, it was just better not to poke the crow.
So Malcolm held his tongue while he fished the thumbdrive from his pocket, logged into Windows, and flicked the cap off the drive before fitting it into the USB port.
The file explorer window popped open, and Malcolm scanned the list of folders, frowning. Nothing but numerical assignations, nothing to hint what they actually were—seven in total.
“Where am I starting?” he asked. “What is this?”
“Case numbers,” Seong-Jae said quietly. “For each individual incidence. Because at first they could recognize a pattern in methodology, but not the root cause of it, the cases were not grouped together until later.” He tapped the screen, a blunt nail hitting one folder partway down the list. “That one. That is the first identified case assigned to him.”
“You remember that even after all these years?” Malcolm asked, as he clicked on the folder.
“Some things, you do not forget.”
Malcolm drew his brows together, but said nothing as the new window opened on enlarged thumbnails—document previews, photographs, and…
“Fuck,” he swore.
Even in low-detail thumbnails, the grainy black-and-white of old photographs…
This was hellish. Wrong.
Wrong enough to make his gut clutch up into hard terrible fists of dread, squeezed too tight to the point of trembling, bursting with sick tension.
He glanced up, angling the laptop to make sure it wasn’t visible from the aisle or through the narrow gap between their seats. The moment Malcolm clicked the first image to enlarge it, Seong-Jae closed his eyes, drawing in a breath that he didn’t let out, as if bracing in Malcolm’s stead.
As soon the image swelled to fill the screen, Malcolm understood why.
Four bodies.
Four bodies, but it was the way those bodies had been staged that changed…
Everything.
They’d been strung up—strung up, and strung together. Cut into pieces, and then put back together in the strangest way.
Instead of re-attaching severed limbs and other chunks of flesh together…
They’d been run through with thin silver wire, pierced through the heart of the meat as if they were beads strung on a cord. In many places the wire seemed to run parallel to bone—bone that was visible in sliced-off, flat-sanded discs in the gaps between body parts.
Meticulously clean body parts, when they should be slathered with far more blood than the small dribbles that ran here and there, and dripped in captured stop-motion in the single still image.
Those were the first details Malcolm took in, before he registered the rest—all of it in a single rush, dozens of tiny impressions of severed arms, fingers, legs, genitals, all slamming into him at once rather than one at a time. He made a hoarse, nauseated sound in the back of his throat. His stomach jumped up into his chest, convulsing. He couldn’t breathe.
And he slammed his laptop lid shut, pressing his fist over his mouth and turning his face away, toward the bright sunny light of morning spilling across the tarmac and through the window of the plane.
“Why,” he rasped, the only word that could rise to the forefront of his thoughts.
He’d thought he’d seen the worst possible, in his line of work.
He’d thought he knew horror.
Now he knew he’d known nothing. Nothing of what Seong-Jae had seen in his life, and Malcolm only wondered…
Wondered how Seong-Jae was even in one piece, after being inundated with this day by day for years.
“I am sorry,” Seong-Jae said softly—before a warm, coarse-callused hand curled against Malcolm’s wrist, long fingers stretching over the back of his hand. Seong-Jae’s voice was ragged, but gentle, warm with regret and understanding. “I know this must strike you even more deeply, considering how the Mizrahim feel about the desecration of flesh.”
“…y-yeah.” Malcolm flattened his palm against his mouth and breathed through his fingers, opening his eyes. “That’s part of it, but…I just…”
“I know.”
Then Seong-Jae was there—wrapping his arms around Malcolm’s shoulders, gathering him close in the small, confined space, pushing the armrest up between them until he could draw Malcolm against him, the warmth of him burying against Malcolm’s hair, his shoulders.
“I am sorry,” Seong-Jae repeated, this time like a secret between them, soft against Malcolm’s ear. “That I drew you into this. That I needed you so much that I had to expose you to this.”
“I…I understand now why you ran.” Malcolm curled his fingers in Seong-Jae’s jacket, and let himself be shaky enough to just cling for several long moments. “How? How could you look at that, day by day?”
“By being someone I did not want to be,” Seong-Jae whispered. “By learning not to feel anything at all.”
“You aren’t that person,” Malcolm answered, and rested his brow to Seong-Jae’s shoulder. “And it’s unfair of Joshi to show up and ask you to be that person again, as if it’s nothing.”
“Unfair, perhaps,” Seong-Jae said. “But if this suspect is active once more…I will accept that unfairness to prevent this from happening again.”
Malcolm remained silent, just swallowing back the ache in his throat, the awful feeling in his chest, as if everything had been hollowed out of him to leave an empty vessel that gradually filled with a raw, hot, liquid pain.