by Cole McCade
And after a few moments, Vasquez clicked his tongue softly, whistling under his breath, before speaking in a cool British clip that made Min Zhe’s jaw clench with the reminder of another accent, albeit a touch less genuine than Vasquez’s honestly earned lilt.
“Well then,” Vasquez said. “What brings royalty to my doorstep, that the king himself should grace the court jester?”
“Business,” Min Zhe said, finally tearing his gaze from the sky.
That sky wasn’t for him anymore. Not yet. Not now…but maybe one day.
Soon.
He looked down at Vasquez, then, meeting those knowing eyes, that curious arch of his brows.
“I need information,” he said. “And you’re going to help me get it.”
C
LEAVING SADE ALONE WITH LUCAS Aleks likely hadn’t been the best idea.
This wasn’t the first time, over the last two months, that they’d been left to their own devices at Min Zhe’s house, with Lucas cuffed to the sofa and acting like a petulant child left idle with nothing to do. But at least before winter had truly hit, Sade had been able to hide out on the balcony until they couldn’t stand it anymore, forced to share space with Lucas only when they came inside for a drink or a shower or other critical necessities.
They’d let the housekeeper—an extremely large, very no-nonsense fellow named Manny who could palm that fucker like a basketball—handle Lucas’s necessities.
It wasn’t their problem.
But now they were stuck with him.
And trying to work with that vicious snake in their peripheral vision was like trying to work while a toddler stumbled around in their vicinity with a scalpel.
Not that they were getting anywhere, right now.
Trying to get back into BPD systems, at the moment, would be too obvious; they’d been too reliant on the backdoors they’d left, and now that they’d been spotted the new person on the other end of the line would be too vigilant for Sade to pull off a fast one without probably getting locked out and possibly backtraced.
Which meant trying other county systems, maybe even national. The DEA, other branches of Baltimore law enforcement with their own closed systems and possible copies of information from BPD files, anywhere else Sade might be able to dig up those tiny bread crumbs of incriminating evidence that would be key to this case.
But cracking a highly secured system with multiple layers of protection, without getting caught and locked out and possibly locked up, took time. More time than most realized, and often involved additional effort to code, test, and refine highly specialized worms tailored for specific systems, designed to find the tiniest crack and tunnel in and turn those systems against themselves until they practically peeled themselves open to lay their secrets out at the slightest touch.
Sade didn’t think they had that much time.
Min Zhe had spent the last two months putting out feelers, asking careful questions, finding out where the weak spots were that he might be able to leverage without alerting anyone in the BPD or DEA that he was planning a major move. He was also still pushing setup of his new fentanyl operation, despite swearing he wanted out—which was why Sade had refused, up until now, to even think about helping him with a little digital wetwork.
They understood needing to keep up a cover until the time came.
But Min Zhe’s cover killed people.
They couldn’t condone that.
But they couldn’t condone not doing anything to bring this to an end any faster, either…but with their access to BPD case files cut off, this was going to take more work, more time.
But Min Zhe was kicking things into motion, and those wheels would be turning far too quickly far too soo—
“I,” Lucas proclaimed firmly, “have to wee.”
Sade closed their eyes, breathed in and out three times, then opened them again. “That sounds like a personal problem.”
“If you don’t uncuff me,” Lucas lilted, “it’s going to become your problem, too.”
“Frankly I don’t see how I would ever have a problem with leaving you to suffer in a puddle of your own piss for hours,” Sade retorted.
“Sadist.”
“You haven’t even scratched the surface.” Sade frowned at the tangle of code on their screen, deleting a function call and writing in another, not even looking at Lucas—even if they could feel those Persian-cat eyes on them, past the edge of the monitor. “The housekeeper will be here in a few hours. You can either wait for him to walk you like the dog you are, or you can wait for him to clean you out of your own filth. Your choice, but you’re going to wait.”
With a pouty noise, Lucas sighed. “I really don’t understand why you hate me so much. We’re not so different.” A crafty, smirking edge entered his voice. “We’re both willing to do terrible things for the men we love.”
Sade clenched their jaw, then leaned around the monitor to fix that pasty fuck with a flat look. “You wouldn’t know what love looked like if it ran you over in a truck, backed up, ran you over again, then got out and kicked your corpse.”
“And now I know what you think of when you fantasize about me,” Lucas purred, shifting to fold his arms on the back of the sofa and resting his chin atop his hands, watching Sade unerringly. “Come on. Just let me go have a little tinkle, and then you can chain me up again and I’ll be quiet. I promise. Not one peep out of me. I’ll even take a nap.”
“…are you really trying to bargain your way in the bathroom by promising not to be a pain in my ass?”
“My unique capacity for provocation is, at the moment, the only bargaining chip I have.” Lucas smirked. “That, and knowing I’m the only one who’s seen the case files with evidence of your beloved Min Zhe’s prior identity, and my memory doesn’t work particularly well with a bullet hole between the eyes.”
Sade eyed him.
They were having their doubts, honestly, about just what Lucas had or hadn’t seen. They’d been having their doubts, but…
Min Zhe was so desperate to reclaim his lost identity, some semblance of a life, that he wasn’t ready to listen.
Wasn’t ready to think maybe, just maybe, Lucas Aleks had simply learned through other channels about his past as a DEA agent, the undercover operation gone wrong, and how his fight to survive in the underworld he’d been left to had led to a meteoric rise to said underworld’s very throne.
Then used that information to fabricate so-called evidence he could dangle in front of Min Zhe’s nose to save his own conniving little life.
The elusive carrot that didn’t actually exist, baiting Min Zhe onward into trouble.
But with Sade barely even speaking to Min Zhe at all…
He wouldn’t listen to them.
And they had realized long ago that it wasn’t their job to save him.
No one person could save someone if they didn’t want to save themselves.
Lucas’s groans pulled them out of their thoughts; the asshole rolled his eyes, throwing his head back dramatically, rubbing his thighs together. “Come now, Mx. Marcus, my bloody teeth are floating.”
…fucking hell.
“Just wait,” Sade bit off, then thrust to their feet and stalked into Min Zhe’s bedroom.
They ignored the bed where they’d spent so many nights tucked close in Min Zhe’s arms. Buried under Min Zhe’s weight, writhing with their thighs clasped around Min Zhe’s hips, digging their fingers into his hair and crying out Min Zhe’s name.
Instead they shoved the accordion door of the closet open, and rummaged past rows and rows of clothing, cached weapons, boxes full of old junk that needed to be sorted and thrown away, until they found a paper shopping bag from Petsmart.
They’d meant to adopt a dog.
They’d honestly been playing at this illusion of domesticity, as if when Sade slipped away to work with Min Zhe during their brief sojourns from the BPD, playing both sides at the FBI’s behest, somehow all the blood and pain and death fell away and th
ey were just another happy couple with so many years ahead of them—plans, dreams, hopes.
Sade stared bitterly down into the bag, then growled under their breath and dug out the black leather and steel chokechain collar and matching chain-banded leather leash. They’d already decided well before everything went wrong that the chokechain had been a bad idea, inhumane, even if Min Zhe had been dead set on a Rottweiler the shelter had called unadoptable due to aggressive behavioral issues. They’d shoved the chokechain in the closet, forgotten it, and somehow before they could adopt that dog everything had just…
Gone to hell.
Might as well put this to good use.
And right now, Sade wasn’t particularly worried about humane.
They wrapped the leash multiple times around their fist, then paced back out to the living room. The moment Lucas’s head came up, his eyes widened, before he let out a mocking little trill of a laugh, tossing his mane of pale hair back over his shoulder haughtily.
“Please tell me you don’t intend to put that on me.”
Sade stopped, standing behind the couch, looking down at him and clenching their fist against the leash, the links biting into their palm. “Only option. You need the bathroom that bad, you do it on my terms.”
“You are cruel.” Lucas fluttered his lashes. “And kinky. Does your precious Malcolm Khalaji know that his darling impish, innocent little spider is actually this vicious creature?”
“You don’t get to say Min Zhe’s name, and you sure as hell don’t get to say Malcolm’s,” Sade hissed. “Now lift your head.”
Lucas dutifully lifted his pointed little chin, but with a knowing smirk, eyes half-closing—and he let out a small, repellently erotic sound as Sade stretched the collar’s loop wide enough to fit over his head; Sade just ground their teeth and ignored it, and avoided touching the loathsome man’s skin at all as they slipped the collar down over his head and to his neck before drawing it tighter, closing the loop with a rattling hiss of chain links, bunching Lucas’s hair against his neck.
“Tighter, pretty thing,” Lucas moaned, and Sade rolled their eyes.
“Please just…gods, why are you like this?”
“Pathological dysfunction and childhood trauma, now please, will you just take me to the damned loo?”
Sade just flung him another look, before sighing, turning away, and palming the handcuff key Min Zhe had left on the bar—there for emergencies, but well out of Lucas’s reach.
But they froze when Lucas lilted after them, voice drifting toward their back.
“You’re as defensive of Malcolm as you are of your precious Min Zhe Huang. Tell me…how conflicted are your feelings for Malcolm Khalaji, really?” Lucas clucked his tongue. “All that playacting at being family…but you really didn’t like seeing him with my dragonfly, did you? Why…we were almost working together, making him mistrust my Jamjali. Was Malcolm your fallback? Good, wholesome, pure Malcolm, the honorable ideal your Min Zhe can never live up to?”
Sade whipped back, disgust rising up like sickness in the back of their throat. They kicked the couch hard enough to rock it, shove it, making Lucas bounce, yelping and clutching at the backs of the cushions while Sade caught his wrist, digging their fingers in, and snapped the handcuff off with a quick twist of the key. Keeping the key tight in their fist, Sade caught the leash and jerked, nearly dragging Lucas over the back of the sofa by the throat.
“Get. Up,” they ground out.
Choking, face going red, Lucas gagged, grappling at the chokechain digging into his neck. When Sade relaxed their grip just enough, Lucas wheezed, then tumbled off the sofa, lithe frame staggering as he rose to his feet.
“That,” he rasped, “was particularly uncalled for.”
Before he wound his fist around the leash and yanked roughly, pulling Sade into him and nearly knocking them off their feet.
Sade had been ready for this.
They pivoted into it, turning on their heel and dragging the leash for another loop, this time around their entire arm—using leverage to yank it from Lucas’s grip, shortening the distance between them and bringing them in close inside Lucas’s guard. Lucas’s hands came up, snapping out, but Sade slashed their free arm across their chest, deflecting, driving Lucas’s arms down and out of the way so Sade could thrust their knee up and inward.
And right into Lucas’s stomach.
They hit taut muscle—that went loose as with a soft, strange cry Lucas tumbled back, dropping, dangling for a moment by the leash before Sade loosened their grip enough to let him fall. He hit the floor hard, sprawling on his back, and started to sit up, grappling at the leash.
Sade pushed their bare foot into the center of Lucas’s chest, forcing him back down.
Pulled back hard on the leash, until the chokechain bit deep into Lucas’s throat.
And held there, while Lucas struggled, gasping, fingers scrabbling at Sade’s ankle, the collar, the leash, his face turning red, his pretty pink lips now a wrinkled grimace, those dual-color eyes wide and strained.
Yet even now, there was no fear in them.
Just a sort of animal blankness, pushed into survival mode.
Sade stared down at the vile creature underneath them, letting Lucas struggle just enough to understand they were serious—then relaxed their grip minutely, allowing enough slack in the chain that Lucas wouldn’t die. Wouldn’t pass out.
They didn’t want to kill him.
They just wanted to make sure he was listening.
“Keep their names out of your mouth,” Sade said softly, bending down over them, making sure Lucas could see nothing but them, meeting blue and green eyes that flickered and dilated near-black with hatred. “And don’t think you can ever understand what goes on inside my head.” They slowly, slowly wound the leash another circuit around their hand, reeling the two of them closer still. “You don’t know the difference between love and obsession. Someone like you can only mimic love. You treat it like something you can eat and eat and eat until you’re full and satisfied, but there’s a hollow void in your belly that swallows everything so you’re always empty, always desperate to fill yourself with anything you can get, even if it means hurting other people just so you can feel pleasure for a few more minutes.”
Sade relaxed their grip again, then. Giving mercy. Giving air.
But never relinquishing control.
“I’m not like you,” they continued. “I don’t think like you. I don’t play with people. And when I love people, I love them for real and with all my heart. I love Malcolm. He’s my family. He’s the father I can’t see anymore. The brother I miss. The friend I care for.” They set their jaw, their anger trying to rise up, to take control, but they wouldn’t let it. Where Lucas Aleks controlled others…Sade’s pride was controlling themself. “And I love Min Zhe. I love him because he is the earth from which I grew. I love him because he is the other half of my heart. I love him in ways you can’t fathom. Enough that I will let him go to keep from hurting him, instead of cutting him deeper to bind him to me.” They bared their teeth in a smile. “And I will kill you if you betray him. Don’t you ever forget that.”
They stepped back, then, lifting their foot from Lucas’s chest.
And jerking hard on the leash, dragging him to his knees.
“Now get up,” they said,” before you piss yourself like the craven thing you are.”
Lucas said nothing, only reeling on his knees for several long seconds, breathing in deep drafts—but every breath seemed to pull his insidious calm back over him, as he reclaimed his mask. Opened his eyes. Looked up at Sade.
And smiled, all teeth and glinting eyes.
Before without a word he stood, obedient, letting himself be led. As if they’d called a truce.
As if there could ever be peace.
Yet Sade knew, without a doubt…
This was not over.
And before this mess came to a head?
Lucas’s blood would be on their han
ds.
[12: WHAT YOU’RE ALL ABOUT]
SEONG-JAE SAT ACROSS FROM FIFTY-four-year-old Dale Walters with his bagged milk carton resting on the table between them.
And watched the man studiously avoid eye contact with everyone in the room.
Determinedly. Compulsively. The longer Seong-Jae, Malcolm, Joshi, and Garza had watched him since the moment they had identified themselves, the more he swung his head from side to side in the strangest way, this rhythmic pendulum dipping back and forth in a wider and wider arc, as if searching for somewhere that would let him escape the scope of their silent stares.
Not him, Seong-Jae thought, and remembered the man in the rabbit mask looking up at the camera without fear, without hesitation, staring through the lens as if looking into the eyes of a thousand onlookers and saying know me. Fear me. Loathe me, if you wish.
But I will be seen.
This man was not their man.
Seong-Jae caught Malcolm’s eye, shaking his head subtly, tapping the edge of his eyelid. Malcolm glanced from him to Walters, then elbowed Aanga; Aanga leaned around Malcolm, wrinkling his brows at Seong-Jae.
Stop looking at him, Seong-Jae mouthed. We are too many.
Aanga looked puzzled for a moment, shaping his own lips to mimic Seong-Jae’s—until comprehension lit his eyes and he nodded, then leaned over and beckoned to Garza, who stood just behind his chair. She bent down so he could whisper in her ear; Seong-Jae caught her exasperated “Really?” before she sighed, straightening and looking toward the observation window instead.
So did Seong-Jae.
He could still look at Walters, then, without looking directly at him; just his reflection, sallow and tired in the glass.
“Mr. Walters,” he said. “It is safe. You may look up.”
Walters made a soft, almost cowering sound, and his reflection hunched, wrapping his arms around himself in a dead-locked grip. “You can see me.”