Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  “Don’t worry, when I get back to my office I do a victory dance.”

  “Hey,” Lukas said as Mark came back into the room a few minutes later. Mark pulled his head through his T-shirt and peered at Lukas with interest. “You were—you were fucking amazing today.”

  Mark burst into laughter. “I thought I was going to puke! I can’t believe that piece of shit bought it!”

  “Yeah, he only thought he was a genius.”

  “Oh my God.” Mark tugged on the sleeves of his shirt and then rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I don’t even know what happens if this turns into a centerpiece of the investigation against Judge Kline.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh fuck, I didn’t tell you about that. The DA thinks Kline is dirty. In on it.”

  “So that was why he looked like he was shitting bricks when you got on Williams?”

  “Yeah. Confidential info, don’t share.” Mark leaned over to kiss Lukas, which started out soft and brief, but Lukas opened his mouth and tilted his head, and by the time Mark pulled back he was getting a glazed look again. “No fair,” Mark murmured.

  “I fight dirty. Get used to it.” Lukas grinned at him, sprawling back onto the bed, running one hand over his chest and abs suggestively.

  “Damn.” Mark sounded rueful as much as annoyed, and a smile was tugging at his mouth.

  “No, no, go on, you gotta get to your thing.” Lukas gestured magnanimously at the door. “Drinks with people who aren’t naked.”

  “Ugh,” said Mark with feeling, and got to his feet. “Okay, look at me, being an amazing functioning adult. Going to go socialize like a grown-up.”

  “You can do it.”

  “I’ll see you later.” It was halfway to a question, and Lukas didn’t trust himself to answer, so he just nodded. Mark smiled at him, feral and uncertain at the same time, and went in for one more kiss before he headed out.

  Lukas lay in bed for a long while, drifting in and out of a pleasant doze, before getting up and heading in to use the bathroom, pleasantly anticipating getting back to his abandoned pizza. He was just washing his hands when there was a knock at the door—Mark had gone downtown but realized he’d rather be here and hurried back; it seemed utterly plausible—and he was at the door, in his boxers, before he’d even thought about it.

  When he’d flung the door open, he just stared.

  “Frank.”

  “Let me in, Lou.” Frank had a look on his face that Lukas didn’t like at all.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I said let me in.” Frank put his shoulder forward, and Lukas, in ducking back to avoid it, realized he’d inadvertently made a path into the apartment.

  In the split second it took for him to decide that he should run out of the apartment—harder to kill a guy on the street—Frank slammed the door shut behind him.

  “Jesus Christ.” Frank’s eyes raked up him, took in the state of undress, bite marks. “You have a girl here?”

  “No. What’s going on, Frank?”

  “You fucking tell me, Lou. You fucking tell me.” That was when Lukas realized that Frank wasn’t just pissed, he was drunk. “You—you and your fucking asshole buddy—you fucked up everything, you fucked up—I was making real money for once in my fucking life and you’re just going to shut that down?”

  “It was my job, Frank.” He kept his voice level and tried to figure out how far away he was from the gun in his room. It seemed insane. An hour or two ago he’d been fucking Mark in that bed, gun tucked under the edge, and he hadn’t even thought about it, the cold metal weight of it inches away from their bodies.

  Frank’s hands were still empty. Was it worth trying to force a physical fight? Could he take Frank down? Lukas was big, but Frank was big too, and strong, with a huge barrel chest. He was wearing the Federal Bikini Inspector shirt again, for fuck’s sake. Frank’s face had started to flush beet-red.

  “You fucking asshole weasel, it was my life!”

  The thought belatedly occurred to Lukas that if all Frank was on was alcohol, after the sudden implosion of a meth ring, he’d be lucky.

  “Are you high?” He tried to make it sound nonjudgmental.

  “Oh, like that’s the important thing here, and not you fucking me! You going behind my fucking back to the cops!”

  “I didn’t say anything about you to the cops,” said Lukas, in a low voice.

  Frank paused. “But you knew.”

  “Yeah. I figured it out. I knew.”

  “You didn’t tell them?”

  “I don’t work for them. I worked to get Williams, not you. You’re my fucking friend. Or you were supposed to be.”

  Frank’s face spasmed. He looked like he was trying to cry and he’d forgotten how. “You—I can’t fucking believe, you, you—”

  And there it was: there was the gun, in Frank’s hand.

  “We—are—bros!” Frank shouted. If he lived in a nicer building, maybe the shouting would have attracted some attention, but Lukas had his doubts.

  At least that answered the question about having time to get to his bedroom to get his gun. That wasn’t going to be an option.

  “Frank, man,” said Lukas. “Right now you’re on the hook for what, some drug dealing? Low-level stuff? That’s not a big deal. They might not even prosecute you, if you testify against Williams. But if you shoot me, that’s a big deal. That’s something you go away for, for a long time.”

  “I don’t fucking care,” said Frank. “My life is over because you had to be a detective, you had to be an investigator, you couldn’t just be one of us! Who’s going to hire an ex-con? No, man, I’m fucked, and it’s your fucking fault!”

  Frank’s grip on the gun was getting alarmingly shaky. Lukas felt a sort of cool grayness descending over him, narrowing his vision. Was he going to pass out? He hadn’t the last time he’d been shot at, but then again, he hadn’t been nearly this afraid, and he hadn’t been at point-blank range either.

  “Frank,” he said, and reached out.

  The window behind Frank exploded. Frank wheeled around, shouting. It was a small apartment. Lukas was only a few steps from the bed, and the bedroom door was open. He lunged for it and by the time Frank had fired twice out the window and whipped back around, Lukas had the gun in his hands with the safety off, and he had a moment’s flashback to the police academy right before he aimed and fired.

  There was a noise; a streak of pain along the top of his arm. He knew immediately it was a graze.

  Frank wasn’t so lucky. He’d gone down like a sack of bricks. There was a hole in his right shoulder that was spreading a wash of red through his clothes, fast.

  Lukas staggered to his feet, and he only stopped to grab the gun away from Frank before he burst out the front door.

  “Lukas!” He turned his head at the noise. It was Mark, crouched behind a car. He ran in his bare feet, which suddenly hurt very much, ow, fuck, ow—oh, that was because he’d run over broken glass in them, great—and dropped behind the car with him.

  “Are you okay? Oh, shit, fuck, you’re bleeding, fuck, fuck,” Mark was saying, running his hands over Lukas’s arms.

  “Ow! Stop poking it! I’m fine. Graze. You? Did that fucker hit you?”

  “No, I don’t—I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? Did you get hit or not?” Lukas pulled back Mark’s suit jacket and went still.

  Yeah. Yeah, there was a bloodstain, spreading from his side. Lukas’s fingers were smearing wet blood over the white cotton.

  Mark waved his cell phone at Lukas. “I called 911. They’re coming with an ambulance.”

  “Good, because you’re going to need it!” Lukas grabbed Mark’s phone out of his hand and dialed it again. He said, “This is the clusterfuck on 15th Avenue Northwest, you’re sending buses. There’s two fucking—no, three, three fucking gunshot wounds up here, send enough guys,” and hung up. He could already hear the sirens in the distance. Th
e good news was that Swedish was close by. The bad news was that Harborview wasn’t, and Harborview was the place for fucking bullshit gunshot wounds. That was where you wanted to go if you got shot. He’d had a buddy get shot once who never shut up about it. His brain was spinning, frantically, trying to avoid the reality in front of him.

  Mark’s head lolled back against the side of the car. “You told me you never get shot,” he said, accusatorily.

  “You’re not supposed to get shot either. You’re a goddamn lawyer!”

  “I’m not—oh.” Mark glanced down and touched his fingers to the wound. “I don’t—feel shot.”

  “Are you in shock? God. I don’t even know what shock’s supposed to look like. You’re talking a lot for somebody in shock.” Lukas hunted for something to make a bandage out of, put over the wound. He ended up grabbing Mark’s tie, which he supposed was probably strictly speaking too nice for that, but whatever. He rolled it up and pressed it firmly to the big ugly tear in Mark’s shirt where the bleeding seemed to be coming from, Mark talking indignantly over him.

  “I don’t know either! I went to law school. We’re not supposed to need to know!” Mark rolled his eyes. “You know, Lena’s been doing this for decades and she’s never been shot. Not once.”

  “Maybe Lena’s just better at not getting shot than you!” Lukas was fighting the urge to just start yelling—laughing, maybe, or screaming—and he kept thinking, if this is the last thing I say to him, but he couldn’t make himself say anything else, anything that would acknowledge the possibility. Lukas wasn’t an expert in blood loss but it seemed liked there was a lot of it seeping slowly into Mark’s clean white shirt, leaking out between his fingers. Mark looked pale under his dark hair sticking to his forehead, rivulets of water dripping off his eyebrows and nose. Lukas kept having to blink the rain out of his eyes; it stung.

  “I think I technically saved the day, though, right?” Mark winced and put his hand over Lukas’s, testing the pain by pressing gingerly on the wadded-up tie. “I think I did.”

  “Maybe.”

  Mark looked up at Lukas—Lukas was vividly aware, then, that he was kneeling up over Mark, that they were inches apart. That damn cologne clashing horribly with the smell of blood and wet pavement and cordite. He was still in his boxers, chest bare in the penetrating cold of the night.

  Mark smiled crookedly. “Kiss for luck? The last one didn’t work so hot but maybe it needed a re-up.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Lukas, and dropped his head to kiss Mark. At least there was no blood in his mouth, that was a good sign, right? Right.

  And then, thank God, thank sweet fucking God, the cop car was squealing up on the sidewalk—the big shattered window probably made it a pretty clear target—and the ambulance behind it.

  “Hey. Hey!” Lukas stood up, waving. “Injury over here!”

  “They’re going to fucking shoot you, if you don’t calm down—” Mark was hissing. But he’d gotten the paramedics’ attention, and they hustled over, and next thing he knew Mark was being whisked up onto a gurney. Lukas, they left on the sidewalk for “the next ambulance, I’m sorry, sir, your friend needs more immediate assistance, don’t walk on those until you’re examined.” They weren’t actually leaving yet—probably waiting to see how bad off Frank was—Jesus. Frank.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, dazed, and sat down, wincing again at the glass in his feet.

  The cops came back out of the apartment with grim looks on their faces, and Lukas remembered he’d been holding two guns. They were both on the hood of the car he’d been hiding behind, now, dark metal against dark paint in the ugly, damp night.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “That’s how it always fucking is, though,” Mark said, after the cops had come and gone with their little notebooks and their stony faces, without arresting Lukas thank you very much. There was nothing like an eyewitness who’d seen the first gun and subsequently been shot by it and who had no compunction about listing his legal credentials loudly and at great length while looking heroically pale and bandaged. Frank, per the cops, was still very much alive (and per the volunteer with a shaky grasp of privacy regulations who kept bringing Mark water and getting chatty, had tested positive on his urine tox screen).

  He took a noisy slurp of ice water. It tasted fantastic. “It’s never, like, some brilliant criminal plan that ends in people getting shot. It’s some drunk asshole.”

  Lukas sighed heavily. “Look, they said you can go.”

  “I’m just saying, I think I need another apple juice. I feel faint.” Mark made his best puppy dog eyes up at Lukas, who rolled his eyes but pressed the call light.

  “There, you big baby. You can get one more apple juice.”

  “I can’t believe you shot somebody for me.”

  “I shot somebody for me. He was there to kill me, remember.”

  “It was pretty fucking stupid, right?” Mark made a face. “I just knew if I broke the window he might shoot you but he’d definitely try to shoot me.”

  “Try, nothing. He fucking shot you.”

  Mark patted his side gently. Ultimately he hadn’t had any internal bleeding, so he had a hole in his side full of stitches, which were currently stinging like a son of a bitch despite the drugs, but they were doing an admirable job of keeping the blood in. “Lousy shot.”

  “I can’t fucking believe you. All that guff you gave me about being safe and you get your ass shot.”

  “Hey, my ass is fine.” Mark paused, and then cracked up. “I mean, that works on so many levels—”

  “Two. It works on exactly two levels. Come on, let’s get you dressed. That gown isn’t your color.”

  Mark’s head lolled toward Lukas, and he smiled. “Sure, babe. Whatever.”

  Lukas, gratifyingly, made a face like Mark had just said something both unexpected and alarming, and more or less threw Mark’s clothes at him.

  At least he got his apple juice.

  *

  “Uh, so,” said Lukas, “my car and your car are both back up at my apartment, and I...”

  “Can’t really sleep there.” Mark found himself bursting into laughter, on that thin edge between exhaustion and hysteria. “Yeah, no, not a great option! Come on, we’ll go back to my place.” He pulled out his phone. “Thank God for Uber.”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, I know, the exploitative business model—but the convenience, you have to admit.”

  “Never denied it.”

  They sat in silence in the back of the Uber, with the deeply skeptical gaze of the driver on them in the rearview mirror. Lukas’s feet were bandaged heavily and tucked into the hospital socks with grippy bottoms. He was wearing an oversized sweater and pair of sweatpants the kind hospital volunteer had dug up out of the lost and found or something. The sky was getting light, clouds starting to break up in the distance to the east, a thin gauzy blue behind them.

  Mark turned his head to look out the window as they drove into Capitol Hill. Twenty-four hours before that, the entire world had looked different. He’d expected his worst problem that night to be the case hanging over his head, unresolved, if Ron Williams hadn’t cracked on the stand. Or maybe a hangover.

  Instead he had Lukas next to him—rumpled, smelling funny, but alive. Mark had come back early, claimed he was exhausted, had a headache, whatever, because he’d felt the absence keenly. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Lukas, naked on the bed, smiling lazily up at him.

  That was what was on his mind, the whole way to Lukas’s door. Hand lifted to knock, before he heard raised voices. The muffled shouting sounded all wrong. So he’d peered in the window, and through the moving trails of rainwater sluicing down the glass, he’d seen their figures, Lukas with his hands half-up. Frank, back to the window. Gun in his hand.

  He’d dropped to the ground. Heart pounding with instant fear. He had called 911 first—just long enough to say the address and man waving a gun around—and hung up on them as they begged h
im to stay on the line. And then he’d found a chunk of concrete from a busted section of the curb, and with his heart in his throat, desperate, sure that he had to do something and equally sure he was fucking everything up, he’d waited until Frank’s aim wavered away from Lukas and thrown it through the window.

  He didn’t remember getting shot. He did remember the sudden sense that he badly needed to sit down. Crouching, pulling himself across the ground, hiding behind the car.

  “Hell of a first date,” Mark said suddenly, and across the seat from him, Lukas laughed and laughed.

  As his deep chuckles subsided, Lukas shook his head. “I think the stakeout counted.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  They staggered up to Mark’s apartment. His dress shirt, filthy with blood, had been a dead loss. He was wearing his suit jacket and overcoat over a bare chest.

  At the hospital Mark had wondered if Lukas was going to call his parents to bring clothes, or pick him up, whatever. Lukas hadn’t said anything about it.

  “Shower? I’ve got one of those heads that detaches,” Mark said, and Lukas looked deeply grateful. They bundled in together by unspoken agreement, Mark making a face down at his dressing, Lukas wincing as he lifted his bandaged arm. They got through it, although Mark’s floor maybe got more soaked than was strictly speaking good for it.

  Afterward, Mark said, “Look, I’m going to sleep nude, feel free to join me,” and Lukas made a vague noise of assent before face-planting into Mark’s bed.

  Mark gingerly climbed onto the bed next to him.

  “You know,” Mark said, poking Lukas gently in the side to get him to shift over, “if you really didn’t want to change the sheets, you could have just said so.”

  Lukas somehow fell asleep in the middle of laughing. Mark watched him for a moment, and then slowly lowered himself, and fell asleep listening to Lukas breathe.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lukas squinted at the lock, blinking hard to get his eyes to focus. It wasn’t even that late, but it had been a long and very, very boring surveillance job, and he just wanted to go to sleep.