Mitchell, K.A. [Bad in Baltimore #3] Bad attitude

by Bad Attitude [Samhain MM] (mobi)

  It didn’t matter whether Jamie was on hand as a witness. There was no way to prevent him learning about Gavin’s exploits. The burn of rage that had sustained him through help-ing Beach across the overgrown ground had drained away as if someone had pulled a plug, leaving him only dimly aware of a uniformed officer who identified himself and announced that Gavin was under arrest for criminal trespass.

  Gavin nodded and waited while the officer spoke, submitting to a pat down and dutifully turning to have his hands cuffed. The circlets closed, and the officer spun him around. Gav-in stared at his feet as he was led around the tree that guarded the fort’s entrance on the island side. They came to an abrupt halt.

  “For fuck’s sake, Pendarsky, what are you doing with him?” Jamie’s familiar complaining tone had Gavin resorting to forgotten prayers that another

  stairwell would open underneath his feet and let him slide into the bay. When that failed, Gavin finally raised his eyes from his feet to find Jamie blocking their

  way as solidly as any tree. The light streaming behind him made him look like a saint in a church painting, but Gavin felt far more damned than saved.

  Jamie didn’t glance Gavin’s way. His glare was fixed on the arresting officer. “You want the chief to use you for target practice? You know who this is?”

  “The commander said next time we caught anyone on the fort—” The of-ficer’s—Pendarsky’s—voice cracked with youth and insecurity.

  “Christ, you dense piece of shit, I was there. He said next time we catch yahoos fucking around taking pictures for Facebook out here. He didn’t say arrest the son of the guy who owns the mayor, most of downtown and probably this piece of rock you’re standing on.”

  “Who—”

  “Didn’t you even get his name first? Did you sleep through the academy? Uncuff him.” Gavin thought he might actually be safer with the easily intimidated Officer Pendarsky,

  but Jamie put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder and spun him around. The cuffs were released. “Now, sir, if you’d care to come back to the precinct with us and make a statement…”

  Jamie looked over Gavin’s shoulder as he spoke to him, “…I’m sure we can get this cleared up and get you on your way.”

  “Wait a sec. I know this guy. He’s your queer rich buddy. The one from the newspaper. He gonna suck you off for getting him out of this? Maybe I oughta get in line.”

  Jamie had Pendarsky pinned up against the wall before Gavin could blink, but then Jamie came flying back against Gavin as another officer muscled in, shoving Pendarsky into the tree.

  “You want something to do, Pendarsky, go on and tell Sarge you want to spend the last night of Harbor Festival with every news camera in the state at our precinct, you stupid fuck,” the barrel-chested guy said. “I already ain’t seen my bed in three days.”

  Under that cover, Jamie pulled Gavin a few feet away beneath the entrance arch, mut-tering, “Get in the smaller cruiser out there, stand port of the cockpit. And don’t talk to anyone.”

  “Jamie.” Gavin didn’t know what he was going to say after that. Somehow it just mattered that he said the name. Jamie looked at him finally. The night had leached all the color from his eyes, leaving them as black as the bay. Jamie stared straight through Gavin for a painful heartbeat, then turned away.

  After a funereally silent boat ride, Jamie sent Gavin off with the barrel-chested officer who’d defused the younger policeman. He introduced himself as Officer Geist and offered Gavin a seat next to his desk.

  Officer Geist turned on the computer. “Don’t worry,” he said in an undertone. “I’m just making it look good while Donnigan gets dressed.” Geist coughed, jaw working a couple of times, and tapped at the computer.

  “It’s really not necessary, Officer. I don’t need rules bent for me.” “You don’t want to spend the night in holding. If Donnigan says you’re good to show up

  tomorrow with your lawyer, that’s fine with me.” Gavin didn’t particularly want to spend the night in holding. Further, he’d rather call Mr.

  Atcherson himself than have his father do it. He was grateful, but all too aware of what this would cost Jamie.

  “The guys who dropped your friend at Harbor Hospital say he’ll be fine. Broke his leg.” Officer Geist tapped a pen against the edge of the desk, then flipped it through the air and caught it. “Hope next weekend isn’t this bad. Then it’s the Preakness. I’m off for that. You ever go?”

  “My family usually has a suite.” Gavin smiled. This was the way he understood the world to work. This he knew how to do. “May I borrow your pen for a moment, Officer?”

  Officer Geist handed him the pen. Gavin pulled a sheet of paper toward him, looking over in question. At the officer’s nod, Gavin wrote Perry’s number. “If you call this number tomorrow after ten, Mr. Perry will arrange any sort of seating you might enjoy.”

  “Thank you.” Officer Geist took the paper. Then he jerked his chin. “See you tomorrow, Donnigan.”

  Gavin didn’t need the evidence of his ears to know Jamie had stopped behind his chair. Gavin felt him there. Heat and tension and frustration. Gavin couldn’t have fucked up everything more perfectly than if he’d drawn up a plan and had Perry’s inimitable assist-ance.

  “Guess you need a ride?” Jamie’s voice was low, harsh, as if he didn’t trust himself to keep from shouting.

  Gavin didn’t trust his own voice either, but he found himself answering, “I’d appreciate that very much, thank you.”

  As they reached the parking lot, Jamie said, “I talked to the sarge. Just show up at nine with your lawyer. You might still be processed and arraigned, but without an advance warn-ing, the press won’t be there. Assuming Pendarsky doesn’t shoot off his mouth.”

  “Thank you. You—I didn’t expect you to do—any of this.” Jamie pressed the latch that opened his truck’s handle-free doors and climbed in without

  a word. Gavin froze as Jamie leaned toward him, but all he did was unlock the glove com-partment and put his gun inside before locking it again.

  Gavin sank into his corner, exhaustion settling on him like a blanket woven from iron fibers. He merely wanted to crawl home and forget everything.

  Jamie drove silently, though too roughly for Gavin to drift off. The hard acceleration around corners offered a hint of Jamie’s dark mood. Belatedly Gavin realized they were headed southeast, away from the marina where the Bentley was parked, away from Jamie’s house in Dundalk and the manor in Holly Neck.

  One look at Jamie’s set jaw kept Gavin from asking where they were going. He wouldn’t have long to wait. Gavin might not know the streets, but he knew the shoreline. On this course they’d be in the bay if Jamie kept going.

  Jamie drove into an empty parking lot bordering a small park with a baseball field and didn’t slow as he bounced over the asphalt perimeter onto the grass. The black water of the bay sparkled ahead, lit by the yellow lights of the concrete factory and the looming struc-ture of the Key Bridge.

  Biting his lip to keep silent, Gavin stared through the windshield as Jamie accelerated off the grass and onto a wooden fishing pier, the slat fencing at the end rushing toward the headlights as Jamie stomped on the brakes. Gavin slammed his hands against the dash-board, the seat belt burning against his shoulder and neck.

  Jamie shut off the engine, but the headlights still shone on the waves. If there was an inch between the slender barrier at the end of the pier and the truck’s hood, Gavin couldn’t see it.

  The engine ticked as it cooled and quieted. The only other sound Gavin could hear over the pounding of his heart and the acid pumping to his stomach was Jamie’s fast breaths.

  Forcing a polite smile into his voice, Gavin asked, “Did you take a wrong turn?” Jamie drove his fists against the dashboard. “You tell me, babe. Was that thrill enough

  for you? Did you get your fix? Or do you need to pull a few more crazy stunts to get you through the night?”

  “What are you talking about?”
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  “I’m talking about the fact that every time I turn around, you’re taking some kind of crazy risk. Acting like nothing matters. Like your fucking life doesn’t matter.” Jamie reached under his seat, and the doors popped open. “Maybe it doesn’t to you, but it does to me. And I can’t take this anymore.” He jumped down.

  Gavin climbed out on his own side and intercepted Jamie at the tailgate. “What—” Jamie grabbed his upper arms, fingers tight. “I told you not to go out there. I told you it

  was dangerous. God, when I heard your name screamed like that.” Jamie shut his eyes. Gavin softened his voice. “But I’m fine.” He rested his hands on top of Jamie’s. “Jamie.

  I’m fine.”

  “Fine tonight. What about the next risk, and the next one? I don’t know what the fuck drives people like you, but I can’t—”

  “People like me? Beach, not me. Feel free to hang that label on him. He got me into it.” “And what about you climbing on the Sea Ark and kissing me? Or you deciding just like

  that we could go bare?”

  Gavin clutched Jamie’s wrists and wrenched away. “That wasn’t about me. That’s about you and your stupid control issues.”

  “My control issues?” Jamie thumped himself in the chest. “How is it a control issue to not want to watch someone I love die from taking one stupid risk after another?”

  Now. He would say it now when everything was falling apart, as if that were an excuse. “Love? Please. You love this truck more than you love me. It never has a thought of its own.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the truck.” Jamie squeezed the keys in his fist, then threw them in an arcing flash of metal into the grassy field. “I’m talking about you. And me.”

  “No, you’re ranting. And I’ve had about enough of it. I’m sorry if I frightened you to-night. I’m sorry if I placed you in a difficult position in your job. I didn’t ask you to inter-vene for me. I shouldn’t have involved you in the first place.” The words were calm and measured, but that rage was boiling up in Gavin again. A rage that didn’t have a useful outlet like trying to get Beach out of that hole in the ground. Nothing helped. Nothing Gav-in had learned about shielding himself, walling himself off from the wild sweep of caring so hard about anything that it would actually hurt to lose it. He took in a thin breath that seemed to evaporate in what was burning behind his ribs.

  “So shall I start walking, or would you care to allow me the use of your phone to call for a ride?”

  “That’s it?” Jamie flung his hands up. “You just give up again. Like none of it matters as long as everything’s polite and proper, and don’t forget a gift for the host. Why the fuck do I even bother?”

  Gavin clenched his teeth against the urge to beg, to plead, to tell Jamie that it did matter and he wanted him to bother. Wanted to be more than someone’s charming accessory. Then Jamie would kiss him and take him back to that row house where things were as warm and bright as Jamie. Until Jamie realized there was nothing to Gavin but charm and smooth ex-terior. That he pretended nothing mattered, because until Jamie, nothing had ever mattered before.

  “Don’t pull a muscle trying to feel something, Gavin. I’ll find the damned keys.” Jamie clomped off the pier and into the grass.

  Gavin walked slowly back to the truck. He wished it would rain. Nothing but a sullen cold downpour could put the proper exclamation point on this evening’s disaster. He looked up at the perfectly unclouded sky, then hopefully at a flash of light on the horizon, which only proved to be Jamie waving the light on his phone around as he searched for the keys in the grass.

  The keys weren’t over there. Gavin had seen them traveling in the direction of the base-ball diamond. Jamie hadn’t been looking when he threw them.

  Gavin slammed the door to give vent to his frustration and stomped off into the grass. Jamie looked up at the sound of the door slamming. Fine. Just fine. He didn’t need Gav-

  in’s help to find the fucking keys anyway. What would it take to get through to that guy? Well, Montgomery and his emotional constipation would have to be someone else’s prob-lem. Jamie had watched Colton screw himself out of a good fifty years of life. He wasn’t going to watch Gavin waste his. It was too much. For the first time in weeks, Jamie wanted a cigarette so bad he’d kill for it. There was that emergency one. But fuck if he would light it up over Gavin after three months of not giving in.

  Jamie bent over to look in the grass again, when the creak of wood had him jerking his head up. It happened so slowly, Jamie didn’t know why he didn’t have time to stop it. The Ford’s nose snapped first one slat, then another, and just as Jamie’s running feet hit the wood of the pier, the whole truck slid almost gently into the bay.

  “Gavin.” The cry Jamie made as he launched himself into the water was pointless. Gavin couldn’t hear Jamie through all that water. Couldn’t get out of the truck himself, because Jamie was an insane control freak who had removed all handles from his truck, thinking it was cool. It was his truck, his life. He’d never planned on making room in it for anyone else. Now Gavin was sinking into the bay, unable to find a way out.

  A black truck in night-black water was impossible to track, but thank you, St. Michael, Jamie had left the headlights on. Jamie took a tight pike and hauled himself down after the sinking ton of metal, tracking back along the fender to find the hidden release under the driver’s side door. Smart, so fucking smart you were there, Donny.

  Who was the one who took the risk to put Gavin in this situation? What the fuck made him think he’d prove something by driving them out on the pier? Jamie’s fingers found the release and he pressed it, and again, telling himself he wasn’t hearing the release, and if he only pressed harder, it would open. It wasn’t already too late with the weight of water holding the door shut. He drove his fist into the release, left his hand on it and kicked it before he gave up and started pounding on the glass. Shouldn’t he be able to see Gavin in there, see the pale skin move like the flash of a fish? The headlights didn’t reach this far back. Jamie’s wide-open eyes stared into nothing.

  Turn on the cab light, Gavin. Give me something. Lungs on fire, Jamie swam around to the other side and began working at that door. He

  dug his fingers into the frame and kicked into the window. He stripped off his belt and tried beating the buckle into the empty cold glass, jabbing the prong against it again and again.

  When hands grabbed his arm on a back swing, his first thought was that it was Geist, that he was on a rescue, but Geist would never try to stop him and this wasn’t a rescue, this was Gavin, and it would take three Geists to pull him out of the water because they’d have to sit on him before he stopped trying to get Gavin out of the car.

  He jerked free, kicking back and pressing his face onto the glass again. The green lights on the instrument panel were faint, but there. Where was Gavin?

  Someone yanked Jamie’s head back by his hair, and an arm wrapped around his chest. Jamie fought, shifting his hips and trying to wriggle free, but fingers dug tight into his armpit, and both the man’s arms squeezed him tight and hauled him to the surface.

  Once his lungs had a fresh gulp of air, Jamie was ready to fight more. He rolled and thrashed and dragged his would-be rescuer back under the water. He dragged them under again and again, and arms stayed tight around his chest.

  “I’m not letting go.” The words were grunted into his ear. “I don’t care how much you love that truck, I’m not letting go.”

  Jamie froze, and they started to sink. “Gavin?”

  Gavin didn’t relax his grip but kicked a little to keep them at the surface. “Who else would be dragging you out?”

  Jamie grabbed Gavin’s arm where it was across his body. “Gavin?” It was him. The smell, the feel, Jamie knew him.

  “Did you hit your head when you went in?”

  “I’m fine, let me go.”

  “Not happening.” The water churned under him as Gavin started towing them toward the rocky shore
.

  Jamie took a deep breath and stared at the sky. Everything was the same. It was night. They were in a park in the south end of Dundalk. His truck was under water. But everything was different because Gavin wasn’t drowning, trapped in the truck.

  Jamie reached up to touch Gavin’s arm again. “You’re not in the truck.” Gavin released him suddenly, and Jamie realized he could stand. He turned, hungry for a view of the face he thought he’d only find floating behind that

  black barrier of glass. He cupped Gavin’s cheeks. “You’re not in the truck.”

  “Of course I’m not in the truck. I’m standing next to you. Oh.” Gavin put his hands over Jamie’s and glanced away. “I didn’t—” Gavin’s head came up and he stared back. “That was for me?”

  Jamie flung his hands off so fast Gavin probably would have fallen if they hadn’t been in waist-deep water. “Of course I was looking for you. Didn’t you hear me call you?”

  “Yes, but I thought it more a cry of dismay because your beloved truck—” Jamie started to turn away, and Gavin grabbed him. “Please.” “Please what? I can’t believe you. I tell you I love you, and you think I half killed myself

  for a hunk of metal.” Jamie started to trudge toward the shore. Gavin tackled him, and no matter how Jamie rolled or thrashed his hips or dug his fingers into Gavin’s forearm muscles, his cross-chest grip never slackened as he towed them out to deeper water.

  Jamie stopped fighting, waiting for an opportunity. “Just so you know, Mr. Junior Life-guard, the shoreline is the other way.”

  “I wanted to be sure you were listening.”

  “To what?” Jamie was listening, he also happened to be waiting for Gavin’s grip to slack-en a fraction.

  “You never said you loved me.”

  “That’s bullshit. What do you think I’ve been saying? Why do you think—?” Gavin rolled them both under water, and unprepared and in the middle of—all right—a