The low chuckles that left James’s mouth as he bent over Dom made his skin crawl. Mad. His brother had gone completely mad.
Searing pain slashed through him when James dragged his knife along the healed scar on Dom’s face. The smell of burning flesh clogged his nose and his stomach heaved. He tried to scream, but Slaney held him too tightly to even open his mouth. A low, throaty moan filled the bar.
“Be still,” James snapped as he kept drawing the knife down Dom’s cheek. “It needs to look fresh like mine!” He picked up the mirror once again, then nodded. “There. We’re the same again. Back to the way it should be.”
Slaney released Dom’s head and he shut his eyes, the pain and fury so intense that he shook with it. “No,” he gritted out, his cheek on fucking fire. “We’re not the same. We may look the same, but we are not the same. I’m not you.”
“No, you’re not a wolf.” James walked over to a table and stabbed the knife down into the surface so it stood straight up. He turned back to Dom and smiled, the new wound pulling awkwardly at his flesh. “But I can use you as a sheep. You’ll help us get what we want, and then you’ll help us safely leave this city.”
“Go to hell!” He managed not to wince with the yell.
James grabbed the chair he sat in before and dropped into it again so that he and Dom were on the same level. He smiled a little, cocking his head to the side. “You could turn us in. Wouldn’t take much. But in this lovely little life you’ve built, would you really risk the sexy salt-and-pepper Daddy you’ve landed yourself?”
Dom went perfectly still at the first mention of Abe. He clamped his teeth together and fought the desire to snarl and fling threats at James. He’d just watched the man scar his own face so that they were identical again. His brother wouldn’t hesitate to go after Abe or anyone else in his life.
“What if I walked right up to him on the street? Would he know it wasn’t you? How long do you think it would take for him to figure it out?” James lowered his head a little bit, grin growing wider. “A minute? Five? Or longer? Would he finally figure it out when I had him on his knees and I was sliding my dick into his mouth?”
“You fucking bastard!” Dom snarled. He lunged forward in the chair, but a hand came down on his shoulder, pushing the chair back down on all four legs from where it had rocked forward. The plastic ties sawed through his wrists, cutting through flesh, but he barely noticed. He could only see James’s twisted face and hear his maniacal laughter as it filled the room. “You stay away from him. I will fucking kill you if you go near him!”
James straightened in his chair, a look of smug satisfaction filling his features. “Then it looks like you’re going to do exactly what I say.”
Stopping his struggles, Dom stared at his brother. Silence filled the room again. He would listen to James’s plan. He would learn his role. And when the time came, he knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to put two bullets in his brother’s brain if it meant keeping this insane fuck away from Abe and the rest of his family.
Chapter Eleven
Abe’s heart slammed against his ribs, his palms sweating like he was about to do something illegal. Might as well have been. His thoughts warred painfully in his skull because this was a betrayal of sorts. But his gut was telling him Dom was in trouble. He’d sent a text to the man, hoping for a funny response, and when Dom hadn’t responded within a few hours, every internal alarm he had went off. Dom wasn’t due to leave for a job until that night. They’d kissed for a crazy-long time in his entryway, and then Dom had promised to come by after sending some interesting porn, so they could act it out before he left for a few days. Abe had been looking forward to whatever deviant clip came from Dom’s repertoire and it never arrived. He’d been looking forward to the part afterward more.
A year of texting with the man had proved he had little patience when it came to messing with Abe, and Abe didn’t think a night of incredible sex changed that.
He wanted more of that sex. A lot more of it.
An unanswered phone call later, and his worry had skyrocketed. So here he was at Ward Security, about to ask his son’s boyfriend for help with the pictures of the stick figures. He’d printed out all the images, and the papers crinkled in his fist.
“Are you gonna lurk in the doorway all afternoon, Dad?”
He jerked at the sound of Shane’s voice and saw his son smiling at him just inside the IT room. “What are you doing here?”
Shane put a hand on his chest like he’d been shot. “Not happy to see me?”
“Of course I am.” Just not ready for the shit show I’m about to unleash with my son present. “I didn’t think you worked here.”
“I came by to pick up some papers from Rowe.”
Abe glanced into the computer-filled room and shot a grin at his son. “Don’t see the man in here.”
Shane just rolled his eyes and waved him in. “You here for business or pleasure or both like me?”
“Business.” Abe had only been to the building a couple of times, once for an office party and the other to pick up Quinn. But that time, Quinn met him downstairs, so he’d never gotten a good look at the IT room. It was a surprisingly big area with a massive table in the center and three different workstations with multiple large monitors all attached to mechanical arms. There were two people in the room other than Quinn and Shane. Gidget was a small blonde woman who seemed to favor long skirts, because she wore one every time he’d seen her. Today’s was so full, it covered the leg she had propped in her chair. Bare toes of one foot on the floor, spinning her chair side to side. Cole looked like he could be one of the bodyguards with his big, muscular form but like the time Abe had met him before, the quiet man merely smiled shyly.
Quinn waved and stood. “Hi, Abe.”
Now that he was here, his churning gut told him it was a bad idea. All eyes in the room were on him as they waited expectantly for his reason for just showing up out of the blue.
He flashed back to that last kiss next to Dom’s front door, when his lips had been sore and Dom had run the pad of one finger gently over his bottom lip. “I’ll never get enough,” he’d whispered as he leaned close and soothed Abe’s lips with his tongue.
He shut his eyes, heavy emotion a hard knot lodged in his throat. Risking Dom’s anger was nothing compared to how he’d feel if something bad happened to him.
A hand touched his arm. “Dad, is everything okay?”
Opening his eyes, Abe smiled, then squeezed his son’s shoulder. It was time to come clean. He walked to Quinn and handed him the sheets of paper. “I wanted to see if you could help me figure out what these mean.”
Quinn looked at each page, his brow creasing. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt with a wrinkled blue button-down left open over it. His eyes suddenly shot wide. “Hey, I’ve seen these before. Hollis brought in a message and I couldn’t do anything with it—not without more to go on. How many do you have? Are there more?”
“Just the ones there. Three and a partial.”
“Where did you get these?” Quinn frowned at him.
Abe shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He looked at Shane, whose face was twisted with real concern. And confusion.
“Okay. Just hear me out, because this feels like a betrayal,” he said, his voice rusty. He cleared his throat. “Coming here like this. But he’s not answering his phone, and we were supposed to talk earlier. He was coming over. You should have seen his face when the first one showed up on his door. He was terrified, but he tried to hide it from me.” Fuck, he was rambling.
Shane stepped close. “Who tried to hide it from you, Dad?”
He took a deep breath. “Dominic Walsh.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Quinn’s mouth fall open, but his gaze was glued to his son’s face as his confusion increased before understanding smoothed it out. And like Abe had expected, a frown followed.
“You’re the guy Dom’s been pining over for a year?” Quinn asked, chuckling. �
��Go, Dom,” he murmured.
Gidget and Cole had both stopped working—the room eerily quiet.
Shane crossed his arms. His mouth opened, then snapped shut. He opened it again, the pause so long, it grew uncomfortable. Some kind of electronic device kicked on and yet still, that silence went on. “But he’s my age,” Shane finally got out.
Abe scrubbed his hands over his face. “You think I don’t know that?”
“But…he’s my age,” Shane repeated. “I think he might even be younger than me.”
“Same age, Shane,” Abe growled in warning. He didn’t want his son fixated on Dom’s age. He was just getting past it himself, and there were bigger issues to worry about.
His arms dropped to his sides, then he shoved his hands into his jean pockets. He pulled them out and ran one through his hair.
“Look,” Abe said, “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out.”
“Find out?” Dark eyebrows went halfway up his forehead. “It’s serious? Like dating? Are you dating Dom Walsh, Dad?”
“Yes,” was all he’d admit. If he was serious, if they both were, then Dom should hear that first. No matter how much he loved his son and didn’t want to upset him. “It’s not a hookup.”
“A hookup? How is that even coming out of your mouth? Hookup?”
Abe narrowed his eyes, his temper perking a bit. “Look, I know this is weirding you out. I knew it would, which is why I hadn’t said anything before.”
“So you wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t been here? Quinn would have known?”
The sigh Abe let out was loud in the silence of the room. Silence broken only by the whir of hard drives and the muffled noises of a busy office outside the room. “I would have gone straight to you after asking for Quinn’s help. I wouldn’t do that to you, nor would I do that to Quinn. I’d never ask him to keep something this important from you.”
“This important? So it is serious.”
“What it is, is between Dominic and myself. When we figure it out, I’ll let you know.”
Shane’s face darkened in a way Abe knew only too well. He braced himself, wondering if his son was about to piss him off.
Quinn shuffled his feet loudly, drawing both their gazes. “Shane, remember me telling you Dom had it bad for someone who wouldn’t give him the time of day?” Quinn looked at Abe. “You said no a long time, eh?”
“Eighteen years is like this giant, yawning chasm of time—time he hasn’t yet experienced. Of course I said no. But he’s—” Heat crept up his neck. “Persuasive.”
A snort came from Gidget, who quickly covered her mouth, amusement dancing in her eyes.
“Oh God,” Shane moaned, covering his face. “I so did not want to know this.”
“Look,” Abe snapped. “I’m sorry you’re finding out this way. I am. But I’m not some decrepit old man, and Dom is old enough to know what he wants.”
“And he wants your dad, Shane. I knew whoever it was meant something to him. Even you know Dom and how he liked to get around. It would take someone pretty damn special to yank him to a complete stop.” Quinn offered Abe a sweet smile. “I get why he’s so smitten. You’re a great guy.”
“He’s my father.” Even Shane must have known that argument was lame when a rueful smile twisted his lips. “This is going to take me some time to compute. I was picturing someone more like—”
“More like me?” Abe’s chuckle didn’t hold a lot of humor. “Trust me, I’m as shocked by all this as you are. And like I said, I don’t know what it is exactly we have going on. I just know I like it. I like him. And something is wrong. I have the strongest feeling that he’s in danger.”
Quinn jerked his face down to the papers as if he’d forgotten them. “Danger. Damn. Okay, so let me look at these and the one Hollis brought. It has four of the same figures as these other messages. The one he brought had been left on the wall outside the jeweler.”
“I’m familiar with the case. The store owner hired us when the cops brushed it off as a child’s graffiti. Hollis figured between you three, we’d get an answer.” Shane stared at Abe, his eyes a little shocky.
He was still talking, so that was a plus as far as Abe was concerned. Shane had a tendency in the past to go silent when he was angry. Abe knew this was going to be weird for his son for a while, and he had no idea what to do about it. But right then, his concern was Dom and the messages.
Cole stood and walked over to Quinn. “May I?” he asked, gaze on Abe.
“Sure. I’m already deceiving him just by being here. I’d appreciate any help I can get so we can figure it out quickly.”
Shane’s shoulders slumped. “Dad, did he ask you not to say anything about this?”
“No.”
“Then you’re not really betraying him.”
“He doesn’t know I have the pictures, though. The first one was in chalk on his door. He smeared it before I could sneak a picture of it. The second was painted on my garage door the next day.”
“On yours?” This time, real alarm coated Shane’s question.
Abe nodded. “Dom came back—must have been really early in the morning—to paint over it, but I took the pictures after he left my place upset. The third…”
Quinn growled. “The third was obviously carved into his beautiful car. Assholes.”
“You think it’s more than one person?” Abe asked.
“I have no idea and this picture isn’t the clearest image.”
“He was on the porch at the time and it was pretty late. I couldn’t get a clear image without alerting him to what I was doing. I just had this gut feeling the figures were important. And then, the way he’s acted each time—it was obvious he knew exactly what this was about.”
“What about this fourth one?” Quinn asked.
“I found it in his…er, house. This morning.”
“Oh God,” Shane moaned, closing his eyes before snapping them open. “I’m an adult and logical, but this is still…” he trailed off and then snapped his shoulders straight. “Let’s see what we can figure out.” He was suddenly all business as he took one of the pages from Quinn.
Cole was still frowning at the first page when he cleared his throat. “This reminds me of a show I saw years ago. A Sherlock Holmes show. I can’t remember what it was called, but there were figures like these and they were secret messages that came from a gang of criminals.”
“Criminals?” Abe thought about the aborted story Dom had told him last night. He wasn’t about to share any of that, but it would make sense. Someone faking their own death would probably be running from someone bad.
“They’re ciphers.” Quinn nodded. “Let’s take this to the table. We can put it up on the whiteboard.” He grabbed the pages from Cole and Shane and started copying the images on the massive whiteboard in a black marker. Under each image, he placed a little line as if they were playing a game of Hangman. Abe followed the rest of the team to the table as they quickly shoved aside an empty pizza box and a jumble of paper plates and napkins. Shane took a seat beside him and placed his hand on Abe’s, squeezing gently.
“We’ll figure this out. I promise.”
Quinn stepped back, tapping the marker on his lips as he stared at what he drew. “There are a lot of repeating images here. Even the one where you got only a partial, it looks like the prick was using the same images, so I think it’s safe to guess that the first four images of the message from Dom’s door are the same as the others.” Quinn quickly filled in the missing images and stepped back again.
“So, where do we begin?” Shane asked.
“Well, all words have vowels, so they are a good starting point,” Gidget said.
“Hey Gidget, I’ve got that—oh! Sorry!”
Everyone looked up to see a flustered young man standing in the open doorway. Dark glasses framed light brown eyes. He was actually wearing a suit and tie, carrying several files in his hand. Abe couldn’t recall ever seeing anyone at Ward Security wearing a s
uit, not even the CEO.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were busy,” he mumbled, starting to backpedal out of the room.
“No, wait! Daniel, you’re good with puzzles,” Gidget quickly said, waving him into the room. She turned to Abe and gave a little smile. “Daniel works in our accounting department, but he’s got some experience in financial forensics and fraud. Lots of decoding strange things.”
“I’m good with numbers,” Daniel said a bit stiffly as he walked over to the table. He looked up at the whiteboard they were all facing, and his mouth fell open a little. “Oohhh…you’re cracking a code. Looks like it’s just a simple substitution cipher rather than a Vigenère, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”
“A what?” Abe asked.
“How can you tell?” Cole added.
“By the letter frequencies. You can see by the distribution of characters on the board that some characters appear more often than others. With a Vigenère cipher, you actually have two or more ciphers for a single letter, resulting in less repetition.”
“Here,” Quinn said, already walking toward Daniel with the marker held out. “It’s obvious you know more than we do on this. You start and we’ll help.”
Daniel took a step backward, clutching the files to his chest and shaking his head. “No, really. I’m not an expert. It’s just something that I’ve played with…for fun. I just do numbers.”
“Please,” Abe said, pushing to his feet. “Dom’s in trouble. Cracking this code could help us find him.”
Blinking wide eyes behind his glasses, Daniel’s mouth bobbed open for a second. “Dom’s in trouble?” He looked back at the board, nodding once. Snatching up the marker and putting his files on Quinn’s desk, he stepped up to the board.
“Should we start by listing the entire alphabet and then marking letters off?” Gidget suggested.
Daniel shook his head. “That would leave us wasting time on letters that have a low chance of showing up. The best place to start is always with etaoin shrdlu.”
Sadistic Sherlock (Ward Security Book 4) Page 12