by Aiden Bates
Sunday passed in much the same way, except they stayed at home and decided not to bother with clothes. That had been Nick's suggestion, although he was fairly certain that he wasn't going to get any objections from Ryan. He could already see that Ryan had an exhibitionist streak going. By Sunday night, they were both sated and exhausted. Neither wanted to go back to work on Monday, but they didn't have much of a choice in the matter.
That was okay. They would have plenty of time to do it all again.
Chapter Eight
Ryan went to work on Monday straight from Nick's house. Leaving from another house, from another town, gave his commute and his day an aura of unreality that he had trouble wrapping his head around. Oh, he knew that the day was real all right; he just couldn't quite make himself feel it.
Maybe it was the weekend that made him feel that way. Part of him wondered if the weekend itself had even been real. From the moment he left Nick's house Ryan's memories of the weekend had a weird, rosy haze to them. They hadn't fought, although Nick had been scandalized when Ryan had decided to suck him off in the middle of the woods. They hadn't argued, and they hadn't even really struggled for dominance over the relationship. It had just been a long weekend of happiness, contentment, and sex, and Ryan hadn't wanted it to end.
He'd mostly gone along with whatever Nick had in mind, and that kind of surprised him. He wasn't usually like that with guys, but outside of a professional situation he'd noticed that he was a lot more yielding when it came to Nick. He should really think about why that might be the case. Was he just sick of fighting him at work? Was he just that enthralled by Nick's anise scent, or by the things that beautiful body could do? Was it the chemical urges foisted onto him by the omega gene, or did he really just want to sit there and make Nick happy?
Did it matter?
They'd agreed to try out a relationship. That didn't mean that one was going to work out, but deep in Ryan's heart he wanted it to. Three consecutive nights in Nick's company hadn't been enough. He wanted to wake up every morning wrapped up in Nick's arms, and to go to sleep that way too. He wanted to spend lazy Saturday mornings just lying in bed with his partner and maybe go out and catch a show here and there.
Nick wasn't Dan. Ryan knew that. Nick wasn't that kind of gentle, and nothing about Nick was patient. Ryan also wasn't the same guy that had fallen in love with Dan all those years ago. He still loved Dan, and would love and mourn for Dan until the day he died. He didn't think that loving Dan was incompatible with maybe loving Nick now.
Dan hadn't ever been the jealous type. He’d been secure in Ryan's affection for him, and what was more he'd always made Ryan's happiness a priority. Dan had given up his life to try to save Ryan's. He certainly wouldn't expect Ryan to wallow in grief for the rest of his days. No, that had been something that Ryan had been doing to himself, unable to move forward without some kind of support network.
Putting the cart before the horse, aren't you? He shook his head and laughed at himself as he sat down at his desk. He and Nick were dating, and only barely that. They hadn't discussed whether or not to tell anyone else about them. Ryan had no idea what Nick had in mind when he talked about a long-term relationship. Did he mean a few months? A few weeks? A year or two?
Was he thinking about a claim?
Was that something that Ryan himself would consider? Ryan hadn't really let himself go there yet. He'd certainly planned on having Dan claim him, but that was different. He was older now, more set in his ways. What if he couldn't manage to bend his own will to accommodate living with another human being? It was one thing to be laid back and submissive when he hung out with his new lover for their first weekend together. Keeping his cool when Nick left his underwear on the floor was an entirely different matter.
Then again, maybe he was overthinking things. The great advantage that omegas and alphas had over betas was that they literally had to make it work.
His phone rang, and he picked up. "Detective Tran," he greeted, trying to shake the clouds from his brain.
"Detective Tran? This is Rosa Acker. How are you?"
Ryan smiled. He genuinely liked Rosa. "Rosa, it's good to hear your voice. I'm doing okay. How are things with you?"
"I'm not doing too badly. One of my clients started rehab today, which is a good thing. It was a long, hard road getting him in there, and I'm proud of him. It's not going to be easy, but I think that if anyone's got a shot at beating this it's him." Ryan could hear the smile in her voice. "I was calling because I hadn't heard from you in a little while, and I was wondering if there had been any progress on my brother's case."
Ryan bit the inside of his cheek. "Well, I know that we promised we'd call when we had an update. The thing is, we've got some minor updates, but nothing that's a huge, Got him! moment. It's all comparatively minor stuff right now, or at least stuff that seems minor in the moment. There'll come a point, near the end of the investigation, when every clue that we've uncovered will come together and hit us in the face and we'll all just be floored by the fact that we didn't see something sooner. But until we get that catalyst, it's all going to be little things that might not mean anything."
"I see." Rosa paused for a moment. "But you are working on the case."
"And nothing else," he promised her. "For example, I can promise you that the weapons found at the O'Neal crime scene were the weapons used to kill your brother. That proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the killings are linked, and that he was killed first. But it doesn't necessarily tell us more than that. He might have been killed minutes before her, or hours before her. We don't know yet, and we might never know."
"Oh." Rosa took a deep breath. "Okay, I see what you mean by stuff seeming small."
Ryan hesitated over the next piece of information. "And I did find out that, according to something that Maureen's niece heard, Maureen may have been pregnant by James when they were killed."
Rosa inhaled sharply. "Oh my God."
"Again, right now that doesn't help us to solve the case. It just makes the whole thing even sadder, and Rosa, I am so, so sorry." Ryan's gut twisted. "But Rosa, like I said, that might turn out to be the lynchpin that breaks the whole case."
"Yeah. Yeah, I can see where it might." She sniffed. Ryan wondered if she was crying. "Well, thank you for the information. I get that it's not necessarily useful to you."
"Oh, it's all useful." Ryan huffed out a humorless little laugh. "I just don't know how yet. But Nick and I are going to put it all together, I promise."
"I know you will, sweetheart." She hung up the phone.
Ryan tapped his pen on the desk for a moment, overcome by Rosa's grief. Then he pulled himself back together. Mourning like this wouldn't help bring the killers to justice. Only hard work would do that. A little bit of luck, of course, would go a long way.
A couple of hours later, his phone rang again. "Detective Tran," he greeted.
"Detective, I have a gentleman here by the name of Will O'Neal. He's here to speak with you about your current investigation." The caller was the trooper currently assigned to the front desk.
Ryan gaped. He'd been hoping for a little bit of luck, but this was a little too much luck to be believed. "Did you see his ID? Are you sure that it's him?"
"Yes, sir." The trooper must have been young, if he was addressing Ryan as sir. "He says he needs to speak with you right away."
"Okay. I'll be right up. If you could call Detective Robles in Cold Case, extension 5426, and let him know the situation as well that would be very helpful."
"Yessir." Ryan tried not to roll his eyes. He could just picture the kid's crisp salute. Whatever. He'd been young once too.
He made his way out to the front desk. Will O'Neal wasn't hard to pick out of the crowd. The plumbers' coveralls with the O'Neal & Sons logo were one glaring clue. He looked more or less like Ryan would have expected from a guy with his Marines intake photo, with an extra forty years tacked onto the end. He was a heavy-set man—although Ryan didn
't make the mistake of thinking that all of that bulk was flab—with short, wavy gray hair that was retreating from his forehead at what looked like an alarming rate.
His hazel eyes were as hard as agates, and they bored into Ryan as he walked up to him. "Will O'Neal?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
O'Neal turned around to fully face Ryan, and his mouth twisted. "You must be Tran."
Ryan kept his face neutral. He'd encountered this kind of crap before, more than once. Other guys were "officer," or "detective." Ryan was just addressed by his last name. It was better than any number of slurs, which weren't exactly infrequent. "I'm Detective Tran. My partner, Detective Robles, should be out any minute now. How can I help you?"
"I want to know where the hell you get off talking to my daughter without my permission?" O'Neal stepped right up and into Ryan's space. He was close enough for Ryan to smell his breath, coffee and mint and cigarettes. He had to struggle to keep his face neutral instead of turning away in revulsion.
"Mr. O'Neal, as you've hopefully been made aware, we are investigating a double homicide. We asked Mrs. Tierney a few questions about one of the victims. And she's thirty-four years old, a legal adult with children of her own. We don't legally need a parent's permission to speak to her."
Ryan kept his tone moderate and conciliatory. He could see the eyes of all of the people in the waiting area on him, and he got it. The civilians wanted to avoid getting involved, because they weren't trained to get in between this kind of crap. The cops were watching and waiting, because they wanted to see how things played out. They didn't want to jump the gun.
At the same time, O'Neal was clearly not willing to hear him out here. He'd come in with an agenda. He'd come in to intimidate and attack not both of the detectives who had spoken to his daughter, but only one of them. The Asian one. Would it have killed one of the other troopers to intervene here?
O'Neil jabbed a finger into Ryan's chest. "I'm her father. Her goddamn father. I don't give even half a crap what a scrawny thing like you has to say about it. If I tell you to stay the hell away from my daughter, then I don't care if she's six or sixty-two. You're going to stay away from her and keep your filthy yellow paws off of her. Do I make myself abundantly clear?"
Ryan narrowed his eyes at O'Neal. "As I mentioned, we're investigating a murder. If Mrs. Tierney is willing to speak with us, voluntarily, then we're going to speak with her."
O'Neal's eyes bulged. His face went bright red. "I said you're going to stay away from her!" He brought his arm up and aimed a punch right at Ryan's mouth.
If Ryan had any intention of letting that punch hit him, he'd probably have been in for a world of hurt. He was taller than O'Neil, but O'Neil was built like a tank. Fortunately for Ryan, O'Neil had telegraphed his move so clearly that Russians could pick up the signals in Moscow. He deflected the blow and used O'Neil's own momentum to send him crashing to the floor.
Without giving him a moment to collect himself, Ryan pulled out his handcuffs and cuffed O'Neal's hands behind his back while driving his knee into the small of his back. "You're under arrest for assaulting a police officer. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you." He glanced up at all of the shocked bystanders. "Does one of you fine troopers want to give me a hand getting this guy booked or nah?"
That got people moving. Two uniformed officers swooped in to pick O'Neal up and take him off Ryan's hands. Another one immediately started taking witness statements. Maybe no one had been willing to step in, but everyone knew what they'd seen. O'Neal had come in with the intent to hurt Ryan; he'd just been thwarted by Ryan's superior skills.
Nick chose that moment to rush in from Cold Case. His face was bland and professional until he saw all of the people swarming around, and the pissed-off look on Ryan's face. His eyes traveled immediately to O'Neal, who was still fighting his arrest with everything he had in him. "What the hell happened here?" he asked in a low, growly, dangerous voice that was actually all manner of hot.
"That guy in the coveralls came in screaming about his daughter." The trooper behind the desk pointed at O'Neal. "Tried to take a swing at Detective Tran, but that got him exactly nowhere." He snorted. "Staties don't play around."
"No, we don't." Nick gave O'Neal a cool stare. "Are you okay, Ryan?"
Ryan nodded. "Nothing I can't handle. I get the impression that he's a guy who's used to throwing his weight around. He didn't take kindly to running into someone who wasn't going to let him do that."
"No, he didn't, did he? Can we go talk for a minute?" Nick put an arm around Ryan's shoulder and ushered him back behind the door, into the troopers-only part of the building. Ryan let it happen, torn between his heightened fight-or-flight reaction from the fight and his desire for comfort from his alpha.
"Jesus, Ryan," Nick said, once they were in that back hallway. "He really came after you?"
Ryan leaned his forehead into Nick's shoulder for a moment. It was okay to be a little weak in a moment like this, right? "He only asked for me, too." He looked up at Nick. "He was looking to take his anger out on either the smaller partner, or on the Asian partner, or on both."
"Both is good." Nick shuddered. "I'm so sorry I wasn't there."
"Not your fault." Ryan stroked Nick's face. "Look. These things happen, and I got through it okay. We did learn one thing, though."
"What's that?" Nick leaned into Ryan's touch.
"We learned that we're getting a little too close to the heart of the investigation for Big Brother's comfort."
Nick pursed his lips and stared down the hallway. "I do think you're right. I could wish you weren't though."
Ryan sighed. He tried not to think about Eric Tracey. "Me too."
***
Nick wasn't sure how Ryan was able to be so calm when he'd just been attacked by Will O'Neal. The guy was the size of a truck. That could have gone so much differently than it had, if Ryan had been just a little bit off of his game. Nick should have been there to protect him, and that was a fact.
Of course, Ryan hadn't been off his game, not even a little bit. Ryan hadn't even broken a sweat, and Nick made sure that his boyfriend knew just how incredibly sexy he found it that he could take down a guy like O'Neal with no more effort than snapping his fingers. Ryan invited him to come by his place that night and show him just how sexy incredibly sexy was, which sent a secret little thrill running up Nick's spine.
They still had a case to solve, though. O'Neal's presence in the holding cells presented them with a certain dilemma. He sat down with Ryan, who would probably never spend another second out of Nick's sight, and discussed their options. "Ordinarily," he began, "I'd never think about talking to O'Neal this soon. I wouldn't even want to talk to either of the O'Neal brothers this soon."
"He's onto us, though." Ryan leaned back in his chair and let his hand brush against Nick's. "He wouldn't have lost his mind like that about us going to his daughter if he wasn't onto us—and if there wasn't something there for him to be concerned about."
"No." Nick shook his head. He laced his fingers with Ryan's. "It's possible that it was the parents, the father or the mother, but I think that if it had been them O'Neil probably would have been less irate about our visit. They're both gone now. All that's left is Will and the brother."
Ryan squeezed his hand. "Well, I mean, it could still have been the father and one of the brothers, but my bet is still that it was the two brothers. We're not hearing reports of the father's bad temper. It's Will that lost his wife and kids because he couldn't keep his hands to himself. And it's Will who got packed off to the army when he was just a year into his apprenticeship."
"Marines," Nick corrected.
Ryan made a face. "Sorry. Marines. I get that the distinction is important, although it's not that important under thes
e particular circumstances. So the family packs Will off to the Marines, and they send Steven off to an aunt in New York for a whole year. For a Bostonian to kick their kid down to the City, especially in those days…"
"That would have been a pretty big deal." Nick nodded. "So the family knew, and conspired to cover things up." He made a face. "Jesus. They murdered their own sister. How does the family just cover that up and go about their day?"
Ryan kissed his hand. "Not all families are all that loving. Remember what Katherine said to us about how everyone had problems with Maureen? I mean, it isn't the first family I've seen to resolve their family problems this way."
"Are you talking about…" Nick winced and looked his boyfriend in the eye, unsure of how to proceed with such a topic.
Ryan shook his head. "No. Eric was trying to kill me and missed. That's a completely different situation than this would be, if it is what we think it is." He drummed his fingertips on the tabletop. "I've worked a few cases, though, where a family decides that a recalcitrant daughter—or queer son—is more trouble than they're worth. Believe it or not, we even manage to save some of them." He slumped down, eyes hooded.