by Aiden Bates
Maybe when Ryan turned his head back to Abused Persons, they could try for something real. That assumed that Ryan wanted to try for something real. There had to be a reason he was still single after all these years, right?
God. Nick hadn't even been thinking about a long-term relationship before he'd started working with Ryan. Who met an omega, started fighting with him, and thought, "Oh, yeah, this is the guy for me"?
He showered and changed, and then headed into the office. No one there seemed to think it was odd of him to have shown up an hour late for work, even though he'd never been more than five minutes late in the past. The lack of comment made him nervous, and he chewed on his own nails about it for a little while until Ozzy Morris came up to him sometime around noon. "Hey, so did it pan out?"
Nick scratched his head. "Did what pan out?"
"Lt. Devlin was looking for you, to ask you about the family of that dead girl you found down at Dorchester Heights. We didn't know where you were, so he ran down to Abused Persons to check with Pretty Boy. Pretty Boy told him that you were following up on a lead and would be in a little bit later." Ozzy spread his hands out. "So. Did it pan out or not?"
"Oh. Right. No, it didn't pan out." Nick let himself relax a little bit. "I was trying to run down some information about that pipe, and see if I could learn anything about it. No dice, though. Apparently there's not a lot of difference between black pipe."
"I could've told you that, dude." Ozzy snorted. "My old man was a plumber. That stuff is pretty much all the same, bro. The only difference in this case is that it happens to have one of your vic's blood crusted on it."
"Yeah. Tell me about it." Nick sighed and pulled up a high-resolution image of the pipe. If he was going to BS this thing, he should at least do it properly. Something did catch his eye, less as something to prop up the lie than as a real clue. "I was hoping that these etchings would be some kind of clue, though." He pointed to some numbers and symbols at the threaded end of the pipe. "I mean, those have to be unique."
"Hmm." Ozzy circled around behind Nick to bend over his shoulder and study the image. "Yeah, I mean, could be. It could be that the manufacturer, or wholesaler, marked them at the time for inventory or something. Someone at the Crime Lab should know, or should be able to find out."
Nick sighed. "Yeah, maybe."
Ozzy sniffed, and then grinned. "Dude. You weren't running down squat. You were with Pretty Boy last night, weren't you?" He pitched his voice low, so that it wouldn't carry beyond the desk, but that didn't matter. He'd said it; the secret was out.
"I took a shower!" Nick hissed, uselessly.
"So? That's not the point. The point is that you and Pretty Boy are making time on company time." Ozzy waggled his eyebrows. "Dude, I thought that we were all in agreement. We don't want him here. We don't need him here, and he's kind of disruptive."
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd encouraged this thought process. He hadn't done it alone, but he'd done it. "Look," he said. "First of all, his name is Ryan. Not Pretty Boy, no matter how pretty he is. Second of all, he wants to be here even less than we want him here, and that's saying something. Third, he actually doesn't suck at his job. We've all been kind of awful to him, and we kind of need to grow up. Me included."
Ozzy stared at him for a moment. "Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"I guess it's for real with the two of you, then." Ozzy raised his eyebrows. "Okay, wow. That's really not what I expected."
"Why not? And the fact that we slept together once doesn't mean anything's for real." Nick scowled at his buddy and zoomed in on the markings on the pipe.
"If you could have just seen the look on your face, bro, you'd understand what I mean. Don't tell Nenci, he'll lose his mind." He patted Nick on the shoulder and ambled away.
Nick stared at the picture on the screen for a long moment. Was it "real"? He didn't know. He wasn't sure how to tell, except that he knew it was too soon to know for sure. He knew that he wanted more from Ryan than he could currently have.
The right thing to do would be to talk to Ryan and explain that they needed to back off until the case was closed. He was a professional, he should understand that. Hell, he'd probably laugh at Nick for thinking that they were anything but casual partners anyway.
Nick wasn't going to have that conversation, though. He couldn't. He'd known too much bliss, falling asleep with his omega tucked underneath his chin like that. He needed more, and he'd just have to face the consequences no matter how they fell.
They didn't get together that night. Nick had a dinner scheduled with his brother in Burlington, halfway between Nick's job in Framingham and Vinny's job in Salem, and he wasn't going to be fit company for anyone after that, never mind someone he might be falling in love with.
He met up with Vinny at some brick-oven pizzeria near the Burlington Mall. Vinny might have changed out of his uniform, but everything about him right down to his haircut still screamed "cop." Vinny wouldn't have had any problem with that. Vinny wouldn't even take his uniform off at night, if they didn't make him. "How's it going, little brother?" He stood up from his table and gave Nick a big hug. "It's good to see you, man. It's been a while."
"Yeah. Yeah, it has." Nick gave a nervous little laugh and tried to ignore the butterflies dancing around in his stomach. "How are things? How's Amanda? How are the kids?"
"Everyone's good." Vinny sprawled out in his chair. "We've got another one on the way now. That makes three."
"Three!" Nick gave a little laugh. "Wow, man. That's amazing! How are the older two handling it?"
Vinny rocked his hand from side to side. "Ah, you know. Matty's doing okay. He says that as long as he doesn't have to change any diapers, he's fine. Tommy's two, so I can't really say that he gets it, but whatever. He'll figure it out once the new little guy gets here."
"When's that going to be?" Nick leaned forward.
"August. Just in time for the September swoon." He rolled his eyes. "Seriously though, I'm on number three, Martin's on two, and even Danny's got one now. What gives, bro?"
Nick slumped. "Seriously? With everything—"
Vinny held up a hand. "Don't start with the whole it's the job shtick, okay? It might fly with other people, but every single one of us is a cop too. We all manage to do what we're supposed to do. How is it that you've never even brought someone home to meet the family?"
"I just haven't met the right guy." Nick straightened himself up. One more shortcoming, he guessed. "I mean, yeah, I'd like to start a family. That would be awesome, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm not super jealous of you and the others every time I see your kids and everything. But it just hasn't worked out. I don't get out to meet guys very often, and when I do there's just not a lot of spark."
"I think you're being too picky, bro." Vinny shook his head. "You're thirty. Sure, you're still a good-looking guy, but how much longer is that going to last? You're going to start looking like one of those TV detectives soon, and I mean the old-school kind. Like from the seventies. Then what are you going to do, huh?"
"Jeez, Vinny. I'd like to think he'd still want me when we've reached the balding old guy driving a car with a plaid, flammable interior stage." Nick glowered.
"There are all kinds of matchmaking services, or websites. Try one of those." Vinnie picked up his menu. "Try that MateMatch dot com thing. Everyone's talking about it."
"Your wife started it." Nick stared his brother down. "Note my use of the term wife."
"Okay, so she's a girl. She still knows how to set up a matchmaking website." Vinnie waved a hand. "She can help you, buddy." He sighed. "So. Are you working any dusty old cases?"
"As a matter of fact, I am." Nick took a sip of water and tried not to let the dusty part get to him. "I'm working the James Townsend murder, now the James Townsend - Maureen O'Neal murder."
Vinny lifted his eyebrows. "Are you?" That reaction was about a million miles away from anything that Nick would have e
xpected. Usually he got an eye roll and a snort. "You know Dad worked that case, right?"
Nick almost dropped his glass. "I did not know that." He leaned forward. "Tell me everything."
Chapter Seven
It had been years, eight of them, since Ryan had even considered trying to have a real relationship with another person. He'd had sex, of course. He didn't see that as somehow being unfaithful to Dan's memory. Ryan was an omega, and once omegas passed puberty they needed sex in order to be physically comfortable in their lives. He'd heard of a few that managed celibacy but not many.
He'd kept his sex life strictly superficial, though. Everyone had known what they had signed up for. There had been some anonymous hookups in clubs and bars. There had been some friends-with-benefits kinds of situations, too. Those were nice, when they didn't get weird afterward. He'd had some good times with colleagues from other agencies; those had always been the best, especially Feds. They were great at what they did, they had no expectations and they went home again.
Nick was different. For starters, he was the first one that Ryan had let spend the night at his house. He was the first one that Ryan had made breakfast for. He was the first one that Ryan had been unable to keep his hands off.
They didn't get together the night after they first made love, and that was fine. It gave Ryan a chance to do some laundry, wash some dishes, and feel anxious about his own performance. That wasn't normal for him, either. He was usually the kind of guy who made sure that they both got off and didn't worry too much about it, so long as they both had fun.
He found himself trying to figure out how he could have been better for Nick, and that wasn't like him at all.
He needed to pull himself together. He wasn't some heaving-bosom helpless maiden, living to serve and that was it. He had a job to do, and he wasn't going to get it done if he stared off into space thinking about ways to pleasure his alpha.
Not your alpha, he reminded himself sternly, and looked up Katherine Tierney's workplace again.
Three days after he and Nick first made love, he sent Nick a text. Want to go try to meet up with Katherine Tierney?
He'd figured that Nick was avoiding him for some reason, either because the sex wasn't very good or because he was freaking out about sleeping with a colleague. Maybe he was freaking out about sleeping with this particular colleague; his concerns about working with Ryan hadn't ever gone away, after all. Whatever the reason, Nick hadn't communicated with him for three days, and Ryan figured that he had to take the hint.
Now, though, Nick responded right away, like he'd just been waiting for Ryan to make the first move. Seriously? Ryan shook his head, but read the text. When do we leave?
Now seems good. The air in here is stale.
Ryan signed out one of the unmarked vehicles, a gray Interceptor utility with blacked-out windows. "I have no idea why they don't just mark these and get it over with," he grumbled. He was mostly just filling in empty space between them, although he'd often thought about the subject. "Literally no one doesn't realize that this is a cop car. No one."
Nick snorted. "Yeah, I guess." He took the keys when Ryan held them out and crossed over to the driver's side. Ryan had no idea why he was just letting Nick drive, but it never occurred to him to stop Nick either. "I mean, it's not glaringly obvious."
"It's got a damn cow catcher on the front bumper, Nick." He buckled himself in. "So what's been going on with you the past few days?"
"Ugh." Nick grimaced and aimed the car toward Cambridge. The drive shouldn't take too long; Tierney's office was right off the Pike so unless there was an accident that they couldn't get around they'd have a straight shot. "I learned something new and exciting from my brother when we had dinner on Wednesday night."
"Really?" Ryan twisted a little to face him. "What's that?"
"Well, for one thing he lit into me about not keeping up with my brothers on giving our parents grandchildren. That was fun." He pressed his lips together and changed lanes to get around a tanker truck. "And then he told me that our dad worked on the Townsend case back when it was new."
Ryan coughed, his eyes going wide. "Excuse me?"
"So I've been tracking that down, to see how bad it is. As it turns out, my dad didn't do much on that case. He was a rookie cop and his job was to get statements from a few witnesses, none of whom saw anything, and to guard the body until the ME's van showed up. Which he did."
Ryan tried not to feel any resentment. His own survival of a hate crime had been grounds for being harassed and mistreated, but Nick's own family connection didn't merit even disclosure? He pushed it down. Nick was disclosing the information, now that he knew exactly what to disclose. "Yeah. Okay. I can see where it must have thrown you for a loop."
"Oh, yeah. I mean, first of all, it was kind of like, why wasn't I told about this earlier? And then I was kind of upset because not only was I not told, but Vinny was. I just wasn't important enough to know." He shook his head. "I hate that."
Ryan didn't know if he was still allowed to touch Nick, so he put a hand on his shoulder instead of his leg. "I'm sorry, man."
"Thanks." He didn't say anything else, but some of the tension dissipated as they drove. Ryan didn't feel any better about the state of his relationship with Nick, but at least Nick seemed to be feeling a little bit better for having gotten all of that off of his chest. Ryan would have to take it.
Katherine Tierney worked for a huge biotech firm in Cambridge, right near the off-ramp from the Pike. She worked in Human Resources, according to the directory that Ryan had found online, and according to the receptionist she was in the office that day. She was in a meeting when they arrived, but given that they'd arrived unannounced, they didn't mind waiting.
Ryan glanced over at his partner as they sat in the reception area. He looked like he was stuck in his thoughts. He didn't glance Ryan's way once as they sat there. Obviously Ryan had read their situation all wrong. He needed to step back and accept the inevitable. He could ignore the little stab of disappointment in his heart.
Katherine Tierney came out to meet them. She was a pretty brunette in her mid-thirties, with a stylish blue pantsuit and a bright, sparkling smile. She walked right up to them and offered her hand to shake. "Hi, I'm Kathleen Tierney. I understand that you wanted to meet?" She smiled at them, professional but confused.
Ryan took the lead. He gave his most reassuring smile and shook her hand. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Detective Tran, this is Detective Robles. We wanted to talk to you about something that happened a long time ago but is probably a little personal for your family. Is there someplace a little more private that we could go?"
Tierney blinked. "Sure, I suppose we can head into my office if you don't mind a few papers stacked up." She blushed a little. "It's a hazard of the job, I'm afraid."
"I know the feeling," Nick rumbled.
They followed her down a long, beige corridor to an office with Tierney's name and the words Human Resources blazoned on the outside. "Have a seat, Detectives," she urged. "How can I help you?"
Ryan and Nick exchanged glances. "Well, how much did you know about your aunt, Maureen O'Neal?"
Kathleen bit her lip. "Well, I know that she did something that was kind of—you know, taboo. It seems silly to us now, but this was forty years ago." She squirmed. "I mean, the last law against racial mixing wasn't struck down in this country until 2000."
"Yes, ma'am. In Alabama." Nick nodded.
"So it was pretty shocking to the whole neighborhood when Maureen did it, I guess. My mom told me that they ran her right out of town." She sighed. "I'm not going to pretend that it was right of them. I'm just hoping that she and her baby are out there somewhere, safe and sound."
"A baby?" Ryan almost dropped his pen. "She was pregnant?"
Katherine looked back and forth between them. "Didn't anyone tell you? Yes, Maureen was pregnant by that poor young man, James Townsend. She was going to have his baby."
Ryan felt sick. Nick look
ed a little green around the gills himself. "Oh, I see," Ryan said. "There wasn't any evidence of that, but I suppose if she was still in early pregnancy there wouldn't be."
Katherine gripped her necklace in her right hand. "Excuse me?"
Ryan straightened up. "I'm very sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Maureen wasn't run out of town. Did you hear, on the news a couple of weeks ago, about human remains having been found over at the Dorchester Heights monument?"
She covered her mouth with her hand. "Maureen?"
Nick nodded and covered her free hand with his. Ryan fought down a completely inappropriate stab of jealousy. "I'm so sorry for your loss," Nick told her. "It looks, based on some things that were left with her remains, that she was killed at about the same time as James Townsend. Maybe within a day or two."