The Losing Game

by Lane Swift

  “What happened then?”

  “He went into his house, and I left.”

  “Did you go straight home?”

  “No. I pulled up around the corner and called Lois and told her not to set the alarm. Then I sat in the car and stewed. About ten minutes later, I saw Lucas go out for a run. I thought he might come back, but I didn’t wait to see. I was getting cold, so I went home.”

  Thierry switched off the record button and put his handset into his coat pocket. “I might have done that once or twice myself. The early days are butterflies and roses. But they’re also beestings and thorns.”

  “Is that one of Cecile’s?”

  “Yes.” Thierry’s right knee was bouncing. Seagulls, tilted sideways by the strength of the wind, soared and swooped and screeched too close for comfort. At last, he said, “Dante, do you believe his story?”

  “Yes. Why? Do you know something?”

  “No. We know very little. With the bullet lodged in his rib, we have next to no physical evidence except the caliber of the gun used. The same as every wannabe gangster in the south of England. The vomit—”

  “He was sick?”

  “No, but someone at the scene was. Perhaps the shooter. The specimen is in the labs for testing, but it’s unlikely that we’ll get much out of it. The stomach acids will have seen to that.”

  Dante tamped down the urge to smile. To laugh. “Nothing else?”

  “No. The ground was frozen solid. No tire marks, no footprints, no fibers except the ones from Lucas’s jacket. Nothing.”

  The waves were lively and loud, crashing white foam against the breakers and the side of the dock, kicking up the putrid stench of rotting seaweed, tossing the smaller boats up and down, in a frantic rhythm akin to the beat of Dante’s heart. Luck was on his and Lucas’s side for now, but they weren’t away in the clear blue yet.

  As if on cue, Thierry said, “You know Lucas lost his sister?”

  “Yes. Back in April.”

  “My officers spoke to some of his work colleagues. He hasn’t been himself for some months. Withdrawn, moody, unsociable. You don’t think he’s taking drugs? Or that he’s got in with the wrong crowd?”

  “No. Absolutely not. He’s been sad and angry, like anyone would be. And he’d be the first to admit that on occasion he hasn’t made the best choices. But he’ll be careful from now on. No more late-night running.”

  “Not while he’s staying with you.”

  Dante reined in his surprise, took a breath, and said levelly, “How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  Dante was no fool. That meant surveillance. He looked at his watch. “Time for lunch?”

  The walk back to Mariner’s Café was into the wind. If Dante had felt like talking, he would have had to shout to be heard. Thierry seemed content to battle the breeze and keep his mouth closed for five minutes, and Dante was glad of the reprieve.

  What were the odds that Thierry knew something he wasn’t letting on about? Dante had had no compunction lying when it suited him. Would Thierry do the same in the interest of law and order?

  On the other hand, Thierry had said once, budgets were prohibitively tight. The cost of an investigation had to be carefully balanced against likelihood of getting an arrest and a conviction. If the leads dried up and Lucas didn’t push it, the case would be forgotten soon enough. Especially if the police were busy. Crime levels always spiked before Christmas.

  This thought buoyed him through a largely tasteless lunch. He and Thierry talked family and Christmas. Dante put the date of Thierry and Cecile’s soiree into his calendar and promised he would be there—next Saturday, the Saturday before Christmas. And, no, it wouldn’t be inappropriate to bring Lucas. None of the investigating officers would be at the party, and Cecile would love to meet him.

  Dante rushed home and made a beeline for his office.

  Lucas was sitting on his office chair, both elbows on the desk. “I thought I’d make myself useful.”

  “You should be resting.”

  Lucas looked tense. “I don’t feel like it at the moment.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “Come and look at this.”

  Lucas scrolled back through the feed on Shaw’s house. Approximately half an hour earlier, Shaw and his wife had loaded four suitcases into the back of their car, locked up their house, and driven away.

  “They’ve taken a trip.” Dante wasn’t one for stating the obvious. He was thinking out loud. “A winter break. Christmas in the sun.”

  “Or an alibi for Shaw while he sends the heavies around to finish me off.”

  Lucas was doing his best to appear lighthearted, but his untouched sandwich and the pallor that had returned to his face, gave his anxiety away. He was frightened, and he needn’t have been.

  Dante swiveled the chair, and Lucas, to face him. Dropping to his haunches, he said, “Shaw won’t try anything. I promise you, I told you. I’ve taken care of it. He’s not going to do anything to draw attention to himself. But regardless of that, no one can touch you here.” Dante looked away and sighed. “I think the police have been keeping an eye on us.”

  “You mean on me?”

  “You. Me. It doesn’t matter. Thierry as much as told me they have no leads.”

  Lucas lifted his left arm and slowly but surely, curled his hand around the back of Dante’s neck. He might not have been a killer, and thank God for that, but he had guts. No one could take that from him.

  “My office party is next Friday.”

  “Are you up to going?”

  “Yes. And I’d like to go with you, if you’ll come. I can bring a guest.”

  Dante took Lucas’s wrist in his hand and kissed his pulse point. The skin was warm and smelled of the soap they’d used when they showered that morning. “Office parties. I hear they’re more dangerous than a war zone.”

  “They can be.” Lucas pushed his fingers under Dante’s collar. “The only thing is, if I bring you, my friend Lily will be a third wheel. I don’t think she’d appreciate that on top of the ones she already has to use to get around.”

  “Perhaps she can find a date?”

  “No. She can’t stand most of the people we work with, and she wouldn’t subject anyone she likes to the most awkward night of the year.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Lucas opened his thighs and drew Dante closer, enough to kiss his mouth. “Then you should come. Tick it off your bucket list.” He smiled all the way to his eyes. “It’s free booze.”

  “Could I ask Lois to come with us? She doesn’t go out often, and she might enjoy the show.”

  “Oh, yes. Lily will love Lois. Why don’t you ask her now, and I’ll check with Lily that she doesn’t mind?”

  Dante was grateful—joyful, even—to see the smile return to Lucas’s face. Lucas’s happiness was tantamount to his own. He would do anything to keep it there.

  Chapter 28

  LUCAS CLICKED off his e-reader. He stood and stretched, both arms above his head, though the left didn’t extend fully and had to be coaxed every centimeter of the way. He’d slept poorly the previous night. The dull fuzziness of not being fully awake hadn’t gone with his morning coffee, or the one he’d had that afternoon.

  The night before, a week after leaving, Richard Shaw and his wife had come home from wherever they’d been. Lucas ought to have felt relief. There had been no heavies sent in retaliation, no rude nighttime awakening, no threats to his well-being. The police had run out of leads. Lucas was in the clear. Yet he still felt like he was under a dark, heavy cloud.

  The Okoros’ living room was in comfortable disarray. Two dozen Christmas cards crowded the wide marble mantel, more jostled with empty mugs and books and earbuds on the lamp tables. A sweatshirt, probably Kit’s, hung over the back of the smaller of the two sofas, and two pairs of shoes, one pair Lucas guiltily realized were his, had been
kicked to the side of the doorway.

  The sparkle of the lights on the tree, the smoky scent and sharp crackle of a log in the real fire, the allure of an open box of dried dates on the coffee table, and—Lucas reached for another—the taste of its syrupy flesh. All were reminiscent of the Christmases he’d had once, when his family had been alive. Not quite the same, though. The Okoros were more vibrant. More celebratory.

  Lucas checked the time. Dante would be up from the shop soon, wanting a shower before they got ready for Lucas’s office party. Kit and Lois were probably down there too, though it wasn’t always easy to know where anyone one was in a house this size.

  Kit was the smallest of the Okoros, but the biggest presence. When she wasn’t working in the shop or the stockroom or out until the small hours, she played her music loud and bounced from room to room like a pinball.

  Lois, on the other hand, seemed to prefer to stay home. Now and again, she’d quietly appear, joining Lucas and Dante in the evening in front of the television or leaning around the door to offer a cup of coffee. She’d asked Lucas to show her how to make coffee in his espresso pot, and ever since she’d used it diligently.

  A few days had turned into a week. Lucas had slotted contentedly into the rhythm of the Okoro house as if he was a part of the family. It occurred to him, that morning, as he angled past a sleepy Kit on his way to the fridge, that he hadn’t become as used to living alone as he’d thought. Nonetheless, Lucas was well enough to return home and look after himself.

  Dante hadn’t broached the subject. Lucas knew he would have to mention it first. As well as the other thing that had been on his mind—

  “Everything all right?” Dante hovered in the doorway.

  “Oh. I didn’t see you there.”

  “You were miles away. You’re not still worrying about Richard Shaw?” Dante picked up Lucas’s shoes and surveyed the living room, dropped the shoes, and made for the dates on the coffee table.

  “Not worrying. No. I was just thinking,” Lucas ventured.

  Dante looked happy, popping a second date into his mouth, and Lucas didn’t want to spoil his mood, but he’d have to bring it up sooner or later. “I’ll be fit enough to go back to work on Monday. I know it’s only for a day and a half, but it’ll be easier for me to get there from my house.”

  “I can drive you from here. I don’t mind.” Dante went for his third date and replaced the lid on the box. He held the dried fruit contemplatively. “You can think about getting yourself to and from work when your office reopens in the New Year.”

  Apart from a skeleton emergency staff that didn’t include Lucas, Excelsior shut down from lunchtime Christmas Eve until the first business day after New Year.

  “I know you don’t mind, and I really appreciate how well you’ve looked after me.” Lucas chose his words carefully. “But I’d quite like to go home.”

  The dates were pitted. Dante swallowed his like it had a giant stone inside it. “I like you being here, but if you want to go home, then you should. Can you wait until tomorrow?”

  “I was thinking Sunday.”

  “And you’ll come here for Christmas?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Dante’s brow furrowed, in spite of his smile. “I was heading upstairs,” he said, as if he expected Lucas not to follow.

  “I’ll come with you. I want to shave.”

  And talk to you about Richard Shaw.

  The bruises on Lucas’s face—on his forehead and jaw—had faded to a pale, dirty yellow. They didn’t hurt. With the growth hormones he’d taken to speed the healing in his shoulder, the hairline fracture in his jaw had also fused. Using an electric razor, Lucas could shave exactly as he always had. The marvels of modern medicine. Apart from the scar on his shoulder, it was almost impossible to see he’d been pummeled and shot a fortnight ago.

  Upstairs, in the attic, Lucas and Dante moved smoothly around each other—as if they’d been doing it for months, not days. While Dante showered and Lucas shaved, they talked about mundanities: Lucas needed to buy new deodorant. Dante thought he might have torn a muscle in his back trying to rearrange some of the furnishings in the shop. Had Lucas heard? George Ezra was going to be doing a twenty-first anniversary tour.

  Lucas had on his trousers and shirt when Dante emerged in a puff of steam from the bathroom, wearing a lemon-yellow towel around his waist. Dante in a towel was no less impressive than Dante in a suit. There was a man who made the clothes, not the other way around.

  “Nice,” Lucas said. “I don’t mind if you go in that.”

  “I’d be cold.”

  “I’d keep you warm.”

  Lucas put his hands on Dante’s chest. His skin wasn’t quite dry and had an irresistible, glossy sheen. Lucas would have been quite content to stay like that, with Dante’s arms around his waist, a glass of wine on the go (now he wasn’t dosed up with drugs) and a slow dance to some soft music….

  Dante pulled at Lucas’s loose shirt cuffs.

  “Do you have cufflinks?”

  “Actually, no. I was going to ask if you had some I could borrow.”

  “I have plenty. Come. Choose some that you like.”

  Lucas picked out plain gold ovals, set with a diagonal line of mother-of-pearl. Dante slipped the gold posts through the holes in Lucas’s cuffs, turned the toggles to set them in place, and lifted Lucas’s knuckles to his lips.

  “How about a tie?”

  “You’ll have to help me with that too.” Lucas could probably manage, but he wouldn’t do a neat job. “Sorry. I hate being so useless.”

  Dante clucked. “I want to help you. Do you have one? Otherwise, you can wear one of mine.”

  Lucas had ties. He’d brought a couple of his own. Still, he said, “Would you pick me one of yours?”

  Dante seemed inordinately pleased. He went to his wardrobe and pulled out a hanger with at least thirty ties lined side by side in neat horizontal rows of half a dozen. “Do you like this?”

  “I love it.”

  The tie was powder blue, plush, and the softest silk. Dante guided Lucas to stand in front of the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. He fastened Lucas’s top button, turned up his collar, and moved behind him. As their eyes caught in the glass, Dante kissed Lucas behind his ear. A hot, icy shiver ran down his spine. He gasped, and laughed.

  “Not now.”

  “I like seeing you blush.” Dante kissed Lucas’s neck. “You’re ravishing when you’re all hot under the collar. Now, crouch a little. I can’t see what I’m doing.”

  Dante wrapped the tie around Lucas’s neck, tugging it gently into place. The silk whispered against the cotton around his neck.

  “Maybe once your shoulder is better, I’ll tie your wrists to the bedpost with this. Or blindfold you with it.”

  “Threat or promise?”

  Dante didn’t answer, only smiled a secret smile. The backs of his fingers brushed Lucas’s cheek as he looped the tie and positioned the knot at Lucas’s neck. They lingered yet again at his throat, softly pinching the skin under Lucas’s chin before pulling the front end of the tie, tightening and centering.

  “There.”

  “Not quite.” Lucas took the rose pin that Dante had given him from his trouser pocket. “Would you pin this to the tie?”

  Dante attached the rose pin, stood back, and admired Lucas before dressing himself. They looked a fine pair, if he said so himself—Lucas in grays and blues, Dante in black and burgundy.

  Lucas didn’t want to spoil the mood, but somehow, it felt like the time was right to broach the subject of Richard Shaw, for the very last time.

  “Before we go to the party tonight, I want you to drive me to Richard Shaw’s house.”

  Dante visibly balked. “No. The deal was that you would stay away from him as well as him staying away from you.”

  A deal you brokered without my consent.

  Lucas’s hackles rose no matter that he’d promised himself he’d keep calm. “I kno
w, but I need to see him myself. I need to do what I should have done in the first place. Sit down and talk to him.”

  “What do you hope to achieve?”

  “Closure.”

  “What closure? It’s done, finished. Why can’t you let it go?”

  “Because I can’t.” Lucas’s blush flared. He held back the urge to throw at Dante, “You’re no better. When I told you not to kill Shaw, I sort of also meant for you to stay away from him completely.”

  Lucas needed to be rational. Grown-up. He wasn’t going to keep his feelings to himself. He was going to explain, and Dante was damned well going to listen. “You know what? What you think, what you feel, what you need—all that matters to me. I should have hoped that what I think and feel and need matters to you too.”

  “It does.” Dante spoke angrily. Spat the words more than spoke them.

  As much as Lucas wanted to raise his voice, to jab Dante in the chest, and pierce that stubborn streak of his, he knew it wouldn’t work. He lowered his voice. “Please support me on this. I need to see him. This will be the last time. I promise.”

  Dante was biting his tongue. He tightened his face into a scowl. “Very well.”

  Okay, it wasn’t quite the loving, caring, assenting tone Lucas was hoping for, but it was a step in the right direction.

  Lucas kissed Dante until his shoulders relaxed and spoke against his lips. “Thank you.”

  Downstairs, Kit waited with her camera. Dante and Lucas stood side by side in front of the fireplace in the living room, Dante with his arm at Lucas’s back, Lucas leaning in.

  “We should have one with Lois,” Lucas suggested.

  Kit went to the door and hollered, “Lois! Come on! They’re waiting.”

  Moments later, a patter-patter on the stairs and Lois entered wearing a sapphire-blue dress, a shimmering shift with short sleeves. In her hair, to one side, she wore a sparkling clip in the shape of a butterfly.

  “Wow.” Lucas’s jaw dropped. “You look stunning.”