Third You Die (kevin connor mysteries)

by Scott Sherman

  Uh-oh.

  There it was.

  The second glance.

  “Wha…” he began. He blinked in confusion. “You’re… you’re not…”

  Suddenly, the arms that embraced me pushed me roughly against the door.

  “You FUCK!” he screamed. “Who the FUCK are you?”

  And… there’s that hostility I was worried about.

  He reached down to put his hands around my neck. He didn’t tighten them. Not yet, at least. But I wasn’t about to take any chances.

  Lucas had almost a foot in height and at least sixty pounds on me. I knew from years of self-defense training that wouldn’t do him much good.

  I swept my arms up between his and quickly spread them apart, removing his hands from my neck. Had I felt truly threatened by Lucas, I’d have probably just kneed him in the balls at that point. It had the advantage of being a move I could pull off quickly and it always worked.

  But once I did that, I doubted we could have a friendly discussion.

  Instead, I dropped to my knees, darted between his legs before he had time to process what was happening, and was now in position behind him.

  I considered pushing him against the door and bending his arm back to keep him in place. That way, he’d be forced to listen. But again, I decided on a more peaceful approach.

  Because in the space of a moment, I knew Lucas hadn’t hurt Brent. Whatever his feelings for the boy were, he was unmistakably overjoyed at the thought of a reunion.

  And given the confidence of that embrace, there was no way the relationship between them was unrequited. Lucas moved in for that kiss with no hesitation or fear. He knew it’d be returned.

  At some point, outside of work and, I bet, behind Charlie’s back, Lucas and Brent had become lovers.

  I didn’t blame him for being incensed to discover I’d lied to him.

  I took a few steps backward and assumed a defensive stance. Legs wide for support and arms raised to protect my body and face.

  I had a feeling that what I thought was a clever ruse to get myself into Lucas’s apartment was, instead, a cruel and heartbreaking deception.

  I didn’t want to hurt him again.

  But Lucas was enraged and built like a linebacker.

  He turned and faced me, huffing like a bull facing a matador. His nostrils flared with anger and his eyes blazed. He was flushed with anger, his cheeks scarlet and so hot I could feel their warmth from a foot away.

  Even so, I was struck by just how beautiful he was. Too bad whatever came next could get real ugly.

  I took another step back, readjusting my arms to a less obviously defensive position. I faced my hands toward him and hoped he could judge body language.

  “I can explain,” I said.

  “Not after I break your jaw,” he growled. But he didn’t step forward.

  “Brent was my friend. I know you cared about him. I’m trying to find him. I came because I thought you’d want to help.”

  Lucas had one of those broad, open faces that showed everything he felt. His eyes softened a few degrees but his teeth remained clenched.

  “Why did you lie? Why did you say you were him? ”

  I could see Lucas was wavering between trust and anger. Hope and betrayal tugged at him in equal measures.

  I took another step back. This seemed to make him even angrier. Or more suspicious. What had I done wrong?

  I had to play him. But how? What did I know about Lucas Fisher, now Lucas Ford? Nothing.

  Except… except I’d seen him before. In the first scene he ever taped with Brent. In most porn, by definition, you’re going to see a lot of skin. But in Lucas’s encounter with Brent, he also revealed what lay underneath.

  The desire to be dominated.

  From the first moments, it was clear how enraptured Lucas was by his younger partner.

  The balance of power between them was striking. Despite Lucas’s age and size advantage over Brent, he immediately fell into the compliant role. Whether that was his general nature, or something triggered by the thought of being controlled by a smaller guy, I didn’t know.

  For whatever reason, though, it seemed like surrendering to a little-brother type flipped a button in Lucas’s head. Amend that: flipped buttons on both of his heads.

  During my years hustling, I learned a lot of lessons. One of the most lucrative was this: If a guy had a button, it always paid to push it.

  “That’s enough,” I barked. I surprised Lucas, and myself, by reversing my slow retreat and briskly striding toward him. I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him against the door. Not enough to hurt him, just enough to assert authority.

  “Cut the crap,” I ordered. I got up in his face like a drill sergeant. Like a lover. “I said I was Brent because I had to talk to you. I didn’t know how else to get you to let me up.

  “I’ve spoken to everyone else I could think of. No one seems to know where he’s gone. You’re my last hope, Lucas. You may be Brent’s last hope, too.”

  Lucas was more than big enough to have pushed me away. Instead, he stayed where I put him. An obedient puppy.

  For now.

  I tried to affect a Christian-Bale-as-Batman deep voice. “So, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to calm the fuck down, invite me in, and maybe even offer me something to drink. Like a normal person.

  “Then, you and I are going to put our heads together and figure out where Brent is. Are you cool with that? Because, if not, I’m more than happy to leave.

  “I came to help you, Lucas, not to get manhandled. So, why don’t you stop acting like such a little bitch and maybe we can get to work and find our friend?”

  Lucas raised his arms to shove me back. I shifted my weight to my heels. If he came after me too strongly, I was ready to protect myself.

  Had I overplayed my hand? Misjudged how hard to push? My natural instincts urged me to back away, but my martial arts training gave me the confidence to remain still until he made his move, so I could use his momentum against him.

  I was glad I waited. Lucas surprised me. The arms I expected to attack me instead wrapped themselves around my back. The towering mountain of man meat that fueled the masturbatory fantasies of millions was hugging me with the fervor of a five-year-old reunited with his daddy after getting lost at the supermarket.

  Also like a lost little boy who’d just been found, Lucas was crying. Big, gulping sobs that shook the both of us.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He held me tightly enough to be uncomfortable. I felt his strong muscles pressed firmly against me.

  Also pressed against me was his hard-on. Just like the first time he hugged me. Only, that one had been meant for Brent. This one popped up just for me.

  Apparently, my berating and pushing him around had an even more dramatic effect than I’d expected. Guess I wasn’t wrong after all. That button of his was pretty dependable.

  Still, as his sobs diminished and I patted his back, telling him it was all going to be fine, the mood shifted from one of confrontation to comfort. As he calmed down, the strength of his embrace and his erection diminished in equal proportions. In a few minutes, both came to an end.

  He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. “You must think I’m a freak,” he said, his voice croaky and breaking. “It’s just, I miss him so much, and I thought you were him. Then, when you weren’t, I wanted to kill you. Not kill you, of course. Just make this whole mess

  … go away.”

  He looked around for something. My guess was it must have been a tissue, because when he didn’t find it, he untucked his T-shirt and blew his nose into the hem.

  “It’s just… I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about what happened. Not anyone. Not the truth. I couldn’t even tell them he’d gone missing.”

  “You can tell me the truth,” I said. “In fact, I’m counting on it.”

  “The whole story?” Lucas asked.

&
nbsp; “I kind of think you have to,” I answered. “For a whole lot of reasons.”

  I didn’t add that his mental health appeared to be one of them.

  Lucas nodded, to himself as much as to me. He somehow looked burdened and relieved at the same time.

  “Come in,” he said, a little dazed and off his game. He started down the hallway to the living room.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” His voice had a robotic quality to it. He was trying to hold it together, but I also noticed he was doing exactly as I’d instructed.

  Not quite like a normal person, I concluded. But close enough.

  31

  The Renegade

  “Do you mind if I wash up?” We were passing a bathroom, and I needed a moment to collect myself.

  “Go ahead,” Lucas said. “You want a drink?”

  “Sure. Water’s fine.”

  I closed and locked the door behind me.

  The bathroom was chicly high tech. All polished aluminum and glass. The toilet was one of those tricked-out jobs with a built-in bidet, warming seat, and automatic disinfection. It made me wish I had to pee. Across from it, a fifteen-inch LCD screen was built into the wall. I guess reading on the john was passe.

  The linen wallpaper, marble floor, and assortment of expensive, hand-shaped soaps spoke to excess wealth. Even the towels were designer, the letters KLN embroidered across their bottom. A play on “clean,” I supposed. For what they cost, I thought they could have spelled out the whole word.

  I opened the medicine cabinet. No medicine, but as vast an array of cleansing, moisturizing, and toning products as I’ve ever seen. All of it was labeled as “anti-aging” formulations, or “youth serums.” Skin tightening creams, under-eye revitalizers, wrinkle reducers… if this stuff didn’t work, the only thing left was embalming fluid. I wondered just how old Lucas’s patron was.

  I could handle myself in a fight, but I was glad I’d avoided one with Lucas. Still, I was flushed with adrenaline and my heart pounded alarmingly. I splashed my face with cold water and took a deep breath. I looked at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were blazing and my nostrils flared.

  A few more deep breaths. Better.

  Lucas seemed crazy enough for the both of us. I had to stay calm.

  “Over here,” Lucas called when he heard me close the door as I exited the bathroom. I followed his voice to the impressive living room.

  Although it was early afternoon, Lucas had gotten himself a can of beer. He handed me a bottle of Evian.

  When Lucas asked if I wanted to hear his “whole story,” I didn’t know he meant “from birth.” Yet, here I was, half an hour into Lucas’s recitation and he still hadn’t entered his Degrassi years. Nor was anything he’d shared-from the town in which he was born to the name of his best friend in the fourth grade-at all relevant. The only mildly interesting thing I’d learned was that he was an army brat, raised by a strict, commanding father of high rank.

  I could probably tie that to his fetish for submissiveness, but it wasn’t a subject on which I wanted to dwell.

  What was going on here? Why this diarrhea of the mouth?

  He’s lonely, I realized. I looked around the room in which we sat and admired the Scandinavian furniture, the thick carpets, the original Rothkos and Miros that hung on the walls. All this staggeringly expensive modernity was almost made moot by the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, which opened the room up to the most amazing view of New York City. A constantly changing, living tapestry of life in the world’s greatest city. I imagined it must be even more spectacular at night.

  It was, I thought, the most beautiful cage I’d ever seen. Coming into the building, I’d been struck by how the redundant security measures made me feel like I was visiting a prison. Sitting with Lucas, I wondered if that’s how he felt, only from the perspective of the prisoner.

  Here he was, ensconced in luxury, but unable to share it with anyone. I was willing to bet his mysterious sugar daddy didn’t encourage Lucas having friends over. Assuming he had any.

  I bet Lucas rarely left this apartment. His patron wouldn’t be taking him on dates. At least, not anywhere there was a chance they’d be seen together. I had no idea how old Lucas’s supporter was, but if Lucas was an anonymous face, he might have been able to explain Lucas as an employee or nephew or something. But Lucas had a face recognizable from hundreds of pornographic movies. I didn’t know anything about his patron, but in my experience these men tended to be closeted or even married.

  Did Lucas go out on his own, then? Probably not. In my previous line of work, I’d dealt with a lot of very rich men. I learned that most of them got that way partly because they never shared their toys. Whoever was keeping Lucas in this kind of style probably expected not just exclusivity, but for Lucas to be here and available at all times.

  Would Lucas even want to go out or talk to old friends? He couldn’t discuss his work, as he didn’t have any. He couldn’t share anything about his living arrangement, as that would likely be the end of it.

  What did he do all day, every day? Who did he talk to? I assumed no one. Which explained, at least partly, this unendurable outpouring of his heart to me. He was bored, lonely, and taking advantage of the opportunity of an audience.

  I’d seen firsthand how much he liked to put on a show.

  Was it worth it? I wondered. Sure, it kept him off the streets and surrounded by beautiful things. But was the price Lucas paid for being a rich man’s plaything worth the paycheck?

  I couldn’t stand that Tony didn’t shout our love from the rooftops. But at least we could go for pizza together. What must it be like to be not just a secret lover but a hidden one?

  These were the questions running through my head as Lucas droned on. I thought of asking them, but Lucas was in the middle of some long story about trying out for his school’s seventh-grade production of West Side Story. At least we’d made it to junior high school.

  Besides, while I felt badly for him, I didn’t know that Lucas’s job satisfaction-or lack thereof-was of any more relevance to Brent’s disappearance than whether or not the thirteen-year-old Lucas wound up cast as a Jet or a Shark. I had to move this along.

  At least I didn’t have to be subtle about it. Lucas liked it when someone took control.

  “Enough.” I cut Lucas off just as he was about to launch into a monologue about how his father took the news that his son was joining the Drama Club rather than the football team. “I think we’ve covered enough of your origin story for one episode. Let’s fast-forward, okay? What do you think happened to Brent?”

  Lucas slumped in his chair and took a long swig of his beer. He crushed the can in his hand. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “He said he needed a break. Just for a week or two, he said. But that was two months ago. I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “A break? From what?”

  “From me. From us.”

  What “us” was Lucas talking about? From everything I’d heard, it was over a year ago that Brent had complained to people about Lucas’s overeager pursuit of him. He’d cut off all contact. Why would he have been in touch with Lucas as recently as two months ago?

  I could have asked a question, but I seemed to get better responses from Lucas when I framed them as commands.

  “Tell me what was going on between you and Brent that he wanted to get away from.” But even as I said it, I knew what the answer must have been.

  “He never said anything? Not even to you? I thought you said you were friends.” His voice quavered and his eyes watered again.

  I knew what he was thinking. Lucas had no life. Whatever was going on between him and Brent-and what else could it be than the obvious, I realized-was the center of his universe. Lucas didn’t know I’d only met Brent once-he probably assumed we were very close. After all, look at all the trouble I was going to to find him. If Brent hadn’t told me what was going on, then maybe Lucas wasn’t that important to him after all.

  At least,
that was what I assumed was going through Lucas’s mind.

  “Of course he did,” I gambled. “He told me you and he’d became lovers. It meant a lot to him.”

  Lucas buried his face in his hands. “Thank god. I was afraid… after all this time… that he just didn’t care.”

  “I’m sure he did,” I fibbed.

  “It was hard for him, I know,” Lucas said. “He still had… feelings for Charlie. He didn’t want to hurt him. He also wanted to get away from SwordFight. Like I did. That’s what got us talking again.”

  “Explain.”

  “There was a time-I’m sure Brent told you-when I was kind of… obsessed with him.”

  “I heard.”

  Lucas blushed. “I was. But it wasn’t just him. There was a lot going on in my life at the time.

  “My kid brother. He wasn’t like me. I broke away from my father at an early age-I think back when I decided to take the role of Tony rather than join the football team, my dad kind of wrote me off.”

  Wow. Who’d have thought that story would turn out to have been relevant? Maybe I should have been paying more attention. I didn’t even remember Lucas mentioning a little brother, although I’m sure he must have during the ten-minute discussion of his family tree.

  “I was born a rebel. Never did a goddamn thing I was told to do. Even if it was what I wanted, too, I’d do the opposite just to piss people off.

  “But my brother, Colin, was a daddy’s boy. Followed orders like a good little soldier. Did everything my father told him to, including enlisting in the army on his eighteenth birthday. Just like dear old Dad.”

  Lucas lifted his face to me. It was pale and stricken, a mask of tragedy. “He was killed in Iraq within a month of his deployment there. His convoy ran over an IED.” Fat tears ran down Lucas’s face but he made no sound. He wiped at them like you wave away flies at a campsite-as if they were pests you expected, accepted, and learned to live with. He was quiet for a minute before saying “And that, as they say, was that.”

  He reached for his can of beer and grimaced when he found it empty and crushed. I thought he might get up for another but instead he just scrunched the corpse he held into a smaller and smaller ball.