Jumping at Shadows

by R. G. Green

  “There’s no one there.”

  Eric froze to utter stillness, his hands reaching for T.J. but not yet touching. His heart hammered in his chest as T.J. straightened and turned. Then in a burst of motion, he struggled around him to lean heavily against the sill. Disbelief washed over him as his head turned sharply left to right and back, looking for any sign of movement, any shadow darker than the rest, anything out of place. The yard, the field, the trees—they were all clearly visible, and they were all clearly empty. T.J. was a warm presence when he slid up behind him.

  “There’s no one there, baby. See?”

  “Fuck!” he spat out against the glass, and he shrugged off his lover’s touch when T.J. tried to pull him from the window again, then turned to his lover with desperate urgency on his face. “He was there, T.J. I saw him. I saw him!” He sounded panicked even to his own ears, and he had little doubt that T.J. had heard it too. A muttered curse escaped as he turned back to glare out the window.

  “I’m not arguing with you, baby,” T.J. said slowly, and after a moment he slid a hand gently down Eric’s back. “Maybe there was someone there, but if there was, he’s gone now. We’re safe.”

  “Safe? He’s out there watching us!” Eric snapped out, twisting angrily away from the window to bear down on his lover. “He was in our own fucking backyard!”

  T.J. breathed a heavy sigh as he leveled a patient, tolerant look at his lover, and Eric felt his anger grudgingly drain away under a measure of guilt as the touch of gentle hands on his waist reminded him of exactly who it was he was snapping at. He didn’t, however, let go of the dread or the certainty of what he’d seen.

  “I’m not jumping at shadows, T.J.,” he said steadily as he let T.J. pull him in. “I saw someone out there, and I know he was watching us. Whether it was Victor or one of his cronies, he was there.” He drew a shuddering sigh as he craned his neck back to look at the window. “I need to find him and put him away. And I need to do it soon.”

  “I know, baby,” T.J. said quietly, twisting Eric around to lay a gentle kiss on his lips. “You will find him, and you will put him away. But not tonight.” Another kiss, longer and deeper. “Come on, let’s go back to bed.”

  Eric balked at first, unwilling to brush aside what he’d seen and the danger he knew it meant to them both, until T.J. reached around him to the window and slid down the shade. Only then did his resistance fade enough for T.J. to move them back to the bed, and he didn’t fight it when T.J. laid them both on the sheets. His only protest began when T.J. lay between him and the window, but T.J. silenced him with a kiss, then distracted him by carefully lifting his wrist. His kiss to the inside of Eric’s wrist was tender and gentle and was finally enough to make Eric settle resignedly against his lover’s body. The mood of a winter night of lovemaking was shattered now, but the goodnight kiss they shared was long and lingering, and at last Eric felt the weariness that always came after a surge of adrenaline faded away. It was surprisingly comforting when T.J. pulled the blankets over them both.

  But just as T.J.’s slow, even breathing finally began to lull him to sleep, his awareness of the window and what he had seen on the other side of the shade suddenly reemerged. Snapped awake by the terrifying thought that Victor was out there, Eric couldn’t keep his eyes off the shade, and not even the warmth of his lover’s arms could soothe away the fear that Victor was getting too close, and far too dangerous.

  Chapter Seven

  “Barbados?” Eric repeated, frowning at Belinda Cox, who was seated two seats down from him around the conference table. It wasn’t even 8:00 a.m. yet, and Eric had been forced to leave T.J. to his own devices for both breakfast and sex in order to drag himself in here despite the condition of the roads. The early morning call from Jeff Davis had sounded promising, though, and given the man he had seen outside his own house last night, Eric wasn’t about to wait until the roads were cleared. The reprieve from the sleet hadn’t lasted through the night, and new ice coated the streets as he made the treacherous drive to the precinct. From what he had heard so far, though, the trip would be worth it.

  “The tickets were purchased two weeks ago from an online travel agency by a Mr. Alexander W. Daniels, but they were issued in the name of A. Kenczik,” Jeff told him calmly, picking up the report of events.

  Eric eyed the man who was seated next to him. The aroma of bitter coffee surrounded them; the pot in the center of the table was already more than half empty. Kenczik wasn’t a common last name, and everyone here knew that Abraham was Judge Kenczik’s first name.

  Jeff took a sip from his cup before continuing. “First-class flights and accommodations all the way, which means expensive, with no charges against any of the judge’s accounts, cash or credit.”

  “The credit card used for the purchase was issued to this Alexander W. Daniels less than two months ago.” Barbara took up the thread, drawing Eric’s eyes back to her. “The address of the cardholder is a residence in Santa Barbara, California, and employment for Mr. Daniels was listed on the application as a chemical manufacturing plant in that area.”

  “The only problem is that Alexander W. Daniels doesn’t exist,” Steve chimed in from Eric’s other side. “At least not the Alexander W. Daniels who bought the tickets to Barbados. The credit card used to purchase it was secured with an invalid SSN.”

  “A fake social security number?” Eric repeated, sitting up straighter in his chair.

  “Not fake,” Steve amended. “It’s real, but the owner of it died about twenty years ago.”

  “Then how—”

  “Failure of the identity theft security system,” Steve answered him easily, leaning back in his chair to stretch out his legs. “In other words, no one noticed that that particular SSN slipped through the cracks, and someone recently picked it up, assumed the name, and called it valid. It’s what we call ‘ghosting’.”

  Ghosting? And it can be done that easily?

  “It’s that easy,” Steve told him, though Eric hadn’t voiced the question out loud. “As long as you know what you’re doing. And whoever did this”—he shrugged—“knew what they were doing.”

  “Except for their e-mail address.” Jeff jumped back in, making Eric twist around to face him. “The address given on the application was fairly new, and valid at the time of the application, which was less than a month ago, by the way. However, it was apparently a temporary address, and the account was canceled immediately after the airline tickets had been delivered. And being an e-ticket, there was no actual paper sent out. I’ll see what comes up from tracing the e-mail address, but don’t get your hopes up.” He sighed as he mimicked Steve’s position. “It could have been set up from anywhere, any Internet café, library, school, anyplace that has computers for public use. And any information given to set up the account could easily be phony. Whoever set it up had kept it up just long enough to get the credit card and the tickets, then shut it down before the service provider caught on. That’s not surprising these days.”

  Especially for someone who knew what they were doing, Eric bleakly, though silently, repeated Steve’s words. He wasn’t exactly banging his head against the wall, but he had to admit that he had hoped the results his team had found would be more conclusive—and more ready to be used for a conviction. An unrealistic hope, he knew, but there nonetheless, especially with Victor Kroger stepping things up beyond merely taking photographs.

  He took a deep breath and willed himself to patience. “Anything else?” he asked the group as a whole.

  There was, but nothing as substantial as what they had already discovered, and the next hour was spent in little more than speculation and organizing the steps to trace the credit card and tickets. Eric let them go before 10:00 a.m. His own meeting with the Captain took less than an hour, and the general small talk around the precinct kept him there until almost noon. That the investigation was completely unofficial all but eliminated the vast amount of paperwork that needed to be filled out, and that alon
e was a boon for which Eric was grateful. A glance at the clock as he was getting ready to leave showed he could still make it home to have lunch with T.J. With Perlman closed for another day, he had one more afternoon he could spend lounging around naked with his lover, and he was ready to get started.

  The hall to the exit doors on the side of the building was long and empty, and sleet rattled audibly against the double-paned glass as Eric stopped to zip his bomber jacket to the neck and then pull the gloves from his pockets. Forecasters had been predicting a bad winter since summer, and so far they weren’t wrong. The reprieve from the cascade of ice had lasted only until the early hours after midnight, returning then to add to what was already frozen on every visible surface. Its continual fall pelted him the instant he stepped outside.

  The majority of the city’s population was still hunkered down in their homes, and because of that, for once, he had been able to park close to the doors of the building. That and spending more time with T.J. were the only silver linings to the weather he could think of as he stepped off the curb amid the crunch of ice.

  “Shit!” he bit out suddenly as his rubber-soled Timberland slid on an icy patch. His knee twisted awkwardly, and he landed on his ass on the pavement with a teeth-jarring thump to his tailbone. For a moment, he sat stunned, disoriented by the suddenness of the fall. Then the cold and wet from the ground began to seep through his jeans. Gritting his teeth, he slowly pushed himself up.

  “Fuck!” he hissed, feeling the pull of strained muscles as he was forced to use his own truck to lever himself upright. He felt like an idiot, and he really hoped that he had been out of the range of the parking lot security cameras when he fell, or he would no doubt be hearing about it—forever. He glanced to where the nearest one was secured above the door, then swung his gaze to where the others were posted around the lot. Not likely. But his coworkers would have to rib him later, and with one hand on his truck for balance, he took another slippery step…

  … and barely caught the movement of another person over the tailgate of the high bed. Both of them froze.

  He had almost missed the man standing there, his figure partially hidden by the ice-coated shrubbery near the back of the lot. The lot wasn’t that deep on this side, and only the darkness of his pea coat and the heavy knit ski cap pulled low over his eyes made him stand out from the whiteness of the shrubs. His hands were slightly raised, and he was looking right at Eric.

  There were no vehicles besides his own truck on this side of the building, and it was too cold and inclement for anyone to be walking anywhere in this city. Those thoughts flitted through Eric’s mind as they stared at each other. The buses weren’t running, and neither were the taxis. And if he was waiting for a friend, he wouldn’t be this far from the road.

  But Victor Kroger’s thugs would be.

  “Shit!” Eric hissed, his hand reaching for the gun holstered at his side while his heart began to pound in his chest. T.J. had merely raised an eyebrow when Eric had put it on that morning, but as far as Eric was concerned, the time for taking chances was over. His fingers were clumsy with his hands gloved, but he pulled the firearm free without taking his eyes off the hired thug, and he released the safety even as he pointed the barrel. The man’s face was nearly hidden, but Eric knew when he looked toward the gun, and there was no question of his being heard. “Freeze! Put your hands in the air! Slowly!”

  Time stopped for a heartbeat; then in a sudden flurry of motion, the man darted into the shrubs faster than Eric would have given him credit for, and he didn’t stop, crashing through the growth in search of the sidewalk on the other side.

  “Freeze!” Eric shouted again, tensing his grip as he lunged forward, needing a clear shot, needing it before he lost his chance to nail Victor right there and then. But his next shout was startled as his foot slipped again, and the pavement slammed into him almost before he realized he was falling. His fingers lost their grip as his elbow was jarred, and his hand caught his weight at the same moment the gun hit the ground. Breathing hard as sharp arcs of pain shot through his wrist and elbow, it took far too long for his senses to return. By then, the lot was quiet save for the tapping of sleet, and the shrubs were still except for the lingering sway of a few stems. Whoever it had been was gone. Again.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, and cried out as pain shot through his wrist when he slammed his fist into the pavement. Anger pushed him to stand awkwardly on his feet, his lungs burning as he leaned heavily on the truck beside him. His head turned wildly to scan the parking lot, looking for any sign of movement, any sign that the dark-coated figure had not gotten away. Nothing. No passing cars, no pedestrians, no figures running into the streets. He may as well have been alone in the world.

  “Fuck!” Breath heaved from his lungs in a cloud and vanished a moment later. Then a thought struck him like a blow, stopping his breath and seemingly his heart for the moment it took to sink in.

  The security cameras. The fucking security cameras. A sense of giddiness swept over him as he craned his neck to see each location around the lot, making eye contact with each watching camera in turn.

  Capt. Carroll wanted something tangible to go on. And now he had it.

  “Nothing,” Eric muttered bitterly, swirling the coffee in his cup while he perched diffidently on the kitchen table. His expression was bitter as T.J. filled his own cup. “At least nothing that can be used for identification, let alone to actually press charges. At least not against him.”

  The man in the parking lot had been caught on tape, but the cameras weren’t at eye level, and the combination of the ski cap, the weather, and the distance had left his face blurred, grainy, and completely unrecognizable. And not once, from the time he came into view to his progression through the shrubs until he vanished in a run from the lot, did it show him doing anything worthy of arrest. Or even questions.

  The same couldn’t be said for Eric.

  Eric’s fall, though lacking anything resembling dignity, would have only been worthy of some teasing from his peers—except for the fact that he had pulled his gun. Never, ever pull a gun on a nonviolent criminal, and from what the tapes showed, nonviolent was exactly what the man was.

  His being a criminal, however, was incredibly doubtful, as Capt. Carroll had explained to him in very precise detail. The gun slipping from his hand—loaded and with the safety off—was enough to earn him a reprimand, if not outright suspension. Had it gone off, he might have lost his badge, if not his life, depending on where the barrel was pointed. Pointed at himself, it might have ended his own life; pointed at the man in the pea coat, it might have been his life with T.J. that he lost—suspended while he sat in a jail cell for shooting an unarmed civilian. The captain had let him off easy by only giving him the mother of all ass chewings, along with a direct order that he not carry his firearm until his unofficial, post-operation leave was officially over.

  Eric grimaced as the steaming coffee burned his tongue.

  “Are you sure it was him?” T.J. asked cautiously. He had turned to lean back against the counter, and though his tone didn’t sound accusing, his eyes were guarded as he looked at Eric over the rim of his cup.

  “What?” Eric’s arm lowered as the surprise of the question caught him. “Of course it was him! Who else could it be?”

  T.J. shrugged. “According to the desk at the precinct, it was a gentleman reporting his lost dog,” he answered calmly. “You told me that yourself, you know, and you saw his visit on the desk log.”

  “I’m sure some old man came in, but that’s not the man on the tape,” Eric muttered bitterly. He scowled rather than grimaced as he sipped his coffee this time.

  “That’s not what the officers at the desk say,” T.J. repeated reasonably. “You said the tape showed him leaving the precinct, and it stands to reason the man leaving the front door would be the same one in the side lot a few moments later. The time stamp on the police report would back up the time stamp on the tape, and I bet if you asked, the
desk would confirm the gentleman with the lost dog was wearing a pea coat and ski cap.”

  “I did, and he was, but that doesn’t prove anything! Half the damn city is wearing pea coats and ski caps, which only means Victor’s cronies fit right in!” Eric snapped, and then drew a breath to calm himself. “Look, I know you don’t believe me any more than they did, but I know what I saw. I know who I saw. And who I saw was one of the assholes working for Victor Kroger.”

  T.J. sighed and took another sip from his mug, watching the ripples on the surface of the coffee a moment before speaking. “Is it really out of the question that the man in the parking lot was just an old man who had lost his dog?” He straightened when Eric stiffened, and forestalled Eric’s next comment by raising one hand pleadingly in front of him. “Yes, you left through the side and he left through the front, but he could have easily come around the building. You already admitted that there are a few blind spots to the security cameras. And yes, it may have looked like he was hiding in the shrubs, but isn’t it possible he was just looking for his dog there? People have been known to leave no stone unturned—literally—when they are looking for a lost animal.”