by Adira August
Hunt licked his lips and felt the tightening in his gut that signalled the anxious arousal Cam always engendered in him when he went Dom. For a few seconds, he imagined thin lines of fire across his thighs and ass. His cock woke and stirred.
But if he was going to play poker tonight, he needed to think about bet-sizing while he sat there, not Cam making a striped print out of his backside.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s actually very kind of you both to do this for him. He’s done plenty for us.”
Cam nodded and they moved on. He cast a last look at the young aspen. “Let’s get a couple branches on the way back, anyway. I’d like to experiment a little.”
“THEY’RE COMING,” the half-naked black man announced from the doorway to the study.
“Thank you. Keep me informed?”
He left. She straightened the papers on her desk, and carefully slid them into a clear plastic sleeve.
Max came in carrying the laptop that couldn’t be traced to them. “You ready to kill Jason Furney?”
She smiled. “Can you do it in the next hour? Cam Snow and his cop are on the way up the track to see Asher right now.”
“I’ve probably got longer than that,” he said. “The skier isn’t moving so fast these days.”
She nodded, but he saw how worried she was. “Have you heard from your ‘friend’ again?”
Someone had found her. Or almost found her. They’d enclosed a letter with her name on it inside another letter to her cousin. It was a blackmail letter demanding $100,000 to keep her whereabouts a secret. It had a number to text. But they seemed to only know David Morganfeld was her cousin; not where she was, exactly.
“No, nothing since the first one.”
“But you’re still worried?”
She smiled. “I’ve been worried for a long time. Just text me when it’s done?”
He kissed her cheek. “I will.”
HUNT AND CAM ROUNDED a curve and found an extensive tumble of granite boulders off to their right. A break in the trees allowed the morning sun to warm the surfaces, creating deep shadows in the crevices.
A family, or possibly an entire clan, of chipmunks raced back and forth over the boulders with stuffed cheeks. Chipmunks were one of the few animals cuter in real life than their cartoon doppelgangers. They scampered eagerly onto their food source: a thin boy-almost-young-man with a wild thatch of dark hair held back by mirrored sunglasses pushed up and back on his head.
The little rodents climbed on his skinny jeans legs, perched on his shoulders, scrambled down into his t-shirt pocket. He fed them from a paper bag, placing small tan chunks of something on his legs and in his pocket, offering them on his fingers.
Charmed, Cam watched while a slight smile played around his mouth. Beside him, Hunter was still as the ground.
The something he expected had arrived.
The boy glanced at them and upended the bag, sending the food tumbling over the boulders. The chipmunks scrambled after it. He held his arm straight up, the last chunk of food displayed on his open palm like an offering to a forest deity.
The jay swooped in and, flapping furiously, plucked the food from his hand. It landed a few feet away on the warm rock and broke the thing into pieces.
The boy got to his feet, all awkward limb stalks and jutting elbows. Folding the bag, he tucked it into his jeans and walked down the boulders easily as descending a home staircase.
“You came,” he said, stopping in front of Cam. Cam nodded, a little shy of the boy who only came up to his nose.
He looked down at Cam’s left leg as if he’d heard a noise and frowned. “You’re in pain. I’ll drive you back in the cart, after.”
He didn’t say after what.
“I’m fine,” Cam assured him. “Shall we go up to the house?”
Irritation flashed across the thin face. “Whatever. You’re going to need the leg later.”
Cam started. “Am I? What for?”
“Dunno,” he shrugged and focused on Hunter, done with the multiple medal-winning Camden Snow.
He didn’t take a step closer, but the air around Hunter was weighted with the energy of the boy’s direct gaze.
“Toho.”
The denial sprang to Hunter’s lips, but his head nodded slightly, once.
The boy frowned. “It means cougar… ?” His brows drew fiercely together, concentrating. “It’s your name?” He said it as if that couldn’t be right.
“Hunter. I’m Detective Lieutenant Hunter Dane. Tell me what you need.”
The boy’s face cleared as if Hunter had explained a mystery. “My father came to see me last night,” the boy said. “He said Jason Furney’s going to die and everyone will think I did it.”
Cam shifted beside them. The boy waved impatiently at the rocks. “You need to sit down. They’re warm; they’ll make you feel better.”
Camden Snow, winner of silver and gold, the platinum-haired, uber-photogenic gracer of cereal boxes and drink cups, didn’t bristle with ego and remain stubbornly where he was. He recognized that suddenly, unexpectedly, Hunt had shifted into cop mode. This was work.
Cam moved over and sat on the edge of the low rock wall that bordered the jogging track. He looked down and listened hard.
“Tell me the other part,” Hunter said.
The boy lifted his head and locked his gaze on Hunter’s as intractably as Cam ever had. “My name is Asher Gamble. My father’s name was Andover Donato.”
Hunter waited to see if Asher would say it or if he had to.
“My father killed my mother and my brother when I was two. He died on death row four years ago.”
HE SAT IN THE MOUTH of the cave with Asher’s laptop, far enough back to be hidden in the shadow, but still in sightline of the radio station on the peak across the ravine from him. He entered the password for the station’s wifi hook-up. Satellite uploads and downloads were scheduled at regular times, making it easy to access or insert a data packet into the station’s upload queue.
He selected the upload window keeping in mind worldwide distribution and the goal of reaching as many targets as possible during business hours. He set upload to the 0807 event. Three in the afternoon in London, seven in the morning in L.A.
By tonight, he’d be gone.
He pressed ENTER and sent Minnie a text. That took care of Jason Furney.
HUNTER CONSIDERED Asher Gamble and his revelation for a few moments. “Go get the cart. Tell whoever you need to that you’re taking Mr. Snow back to his house and he’s invited you for lunch. Mr. Morganfeld has his number.”
Asher jumped the rock wall and ran off through the trees. Hunter turned to Cam who already had his cell in his hands; he’d also shifted into work mode. This attunement between them, whether in a playroom or a crime scene, was the thing Hunt loved most about working with Cam.
When he wasn’t racing at impossible angles at highway speeds down mountains of snow and ice, Cam was the best investigative tool the homicide detective had ever had. An information gathering and analysis genius, this was a thing Cam loved doing. And he did it as he did everything he loved—with full-throttle perfection.
Cam frowned at his cell. He swiped and cocked his head. “His father wasn’t executed.”
“No.”
“You knew.”
Hunter nodded. “Liver cancer. While he was on the row.”
Cam lifted an eyebrow. Hunter waited. Cam’s eyes narrowed.
“Are we playing games, now?”
“I want to hear what you have to say without any input from me.”
“That kid told you his dead father showed up last night with some scary warning about another kid I’d bet money is bullying him.”
“You’re making an assumption.”
“It’s probability.” He gestured with his phone. “Since when do we investigate scary dreams, Hunter?”
After the matchstick case, Hunter Dane had been mad
e head of a new extension of the Denver Police Homicide Bureau: the Forensic Data Inquiry, Analysis, and Examination Unit. It was a mouthful of verbiage meant to disguise his team’s actual job: they investigated homicides amongst the wealthy and notable as discreetly as possible.
It was still unknown if Camden Snow would ever ski again. He’d gone to work for Hunter, eager to feel useful during the months he was tied to wheelchairs and canes and rehab.
“You’re making an assumption,” Hunt repeated, taking a place beside him on the wall.
Cam considered. “No, I’m not. That’s what he told us.”
A sleek chipmunk appeared on the path, waiting nearby with bright, expectant black eyes.
“He didn’t say it was a dream.”
Cam blinked. He stood suddenly and took a turn on his canes to the edge of the track. “I don’t understand.”
Hunt heard the sound of the electric golf cart in the distance. “I don’t either, yet. Asher is wound pretty tight. I don’t have a notebook, and that phone isn’t a complete substitute for your laptop. I want this boy on our turf, in a more relaxed atmosphere. I want to hear his story.”
“You want to interrogate him.”
“Of course I do. When a school-age kid talks about killing, no one should take it lightly.”
Cam checked the track for any sight of Asher, then raised his phone again. “Huh.”
“I’m going to need a few more syllables,” Hunter told him.
Cam ignored him, emitting more displeased grunts and huffs. The sound of gravel crunching accompanied the louder hum of the electric motor.
Hunter stood up. The cart had turned onto the track.
“No Jason Furney on social media in Colorado.” Cam put the cell away as the cart came around the curve.
Asher wasn’t in the cart.
A ruddy-faced man in his sixties drove up to them too fast and stopped too short of Hunter Dane, who’d stepped in front of Cam and into the cart’s path.
“Yeh c’n git hurt, doin’ thet,” the old man sneered.
“And you can get hurt doing that,” Hunter said, the cold lines of his face belied the conversational tone.
“Yeh stay ‘way from m’boy!” He leaned over to get a better view of Cam. “Yeh think I don’ know whatcha is?” He spit at Cam’s feet. “Perverts, the both of yeh!”
He did a fast turnaround and the cart spit dirt at them as he zoomed away. Hunter was surprised the cart had enough power to spin the wheels.
“So, like I said. Everybody up here’s not gay.” Cam gestured with a cane back down the track toward home.
“Your leg going to hold up?” Hunt asked. “I can run ahead and get the Bronco.”
Cam shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. I’ve only been putting weight on it a couple weeks. It’s gonna ache. Just the muscles getting used to holding me up.”
They went along in silence for a while, each allowing the other to let go of the ugliness in his own way. Cam stopped at the little aspen and trailed an open palm along the branch, caressing it. He moved on, leaving it intact.
“Isn’t Morganfeld gay?” Hunter asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Cam laughed. “I’ve been to a party or two up there; he is most definitely gay. I’m surprised his hair isn’t perpetually on fire.”
“If that old man was Asher’s grandfather, he’s also Morganfeld’s ‘houseman’. What is that, anyway?”
“Probably anything you want it to be. Not like a butler. More a take care of the property guy.” Cam paused at an opening in the trees to gaze out over the canyon. His cell was in his hand again.
Hunter imagined a trick holster up Cam’s sleeve popping his phone out like a derringer in an old Western.
“Morganfeld just sent me to voicemail.”
“Could you place the accent?” Hunter meant the old man.
Cam shook his head. “Someplace UK I think. Kind of Irish?”
Hunter didn’t think that was right. “Or Scottish. Or do you say Scots?”
“Dude, you are asking the wrong expert on politically correct nationality adjectives. Is it important?”
“No idea. It’s just …”
Cam waited for Hunt to sort through his thoughts.
“He didn’t call us fags or queers and any of that. He called us perverts.”
“I remember.”
The path dropped steeply at that point on a switchback that would take them to Cam’s turn-off in another half mile. Cam slowed and negotiated each step with care.
“Maybe it’s not what they call gay men where he’s from. Maybe it’s more specific,” Hunt said. “Assume Asher didn’t tell anyone else what he told us. He shows up at the house with a story about meeting two grown men in the woods who invite him back to their place for lunch.”
“Sounds like a fairytale where the kids get eaten.”
“Sounds to me like a nightmare for two gay men,” Hunter said grimly. “You’re the grandfather; what would you think?”
Cam’s smile was sad. “I’d think they were fucking perverts, probably.” His stride lengthened as the track flattened out. “Why do I think we’re not letting this go?”
“I’m not sure we can do, though. There’s nothing to go on. We aren’t in Denver, and we don’t even know what school he goes to or who this Jason is.”
“C’mon,” Cam veered into the woods. “We can cut through here to the house.”
They made their way along a deer trail for a hundred feet and came out behind Cam’s A-frame. There were two doors at ground level, one to the utility hallway that led to the kitchen, and one that opened directly into Cam’s great room.
A breezeway separated the two-story house from the three-car garage, over which was Cam’s art studio. A cedar staircase led to the studio on one side and a walkway to his home gym on the other.
On the third step of the staircase, Asher Gamble rose to his feet.
“Fuck my life,” Cam breathed.
May 25th, 1991
* * *
Nestled in the rolling wooded hills of Maryland, not far from Camp David, sits a three-story building all glass, granite and money. It housed what some call a think tank.
In the parking lot just large enough for the employees and a very few visitors, a black Mercedes discharged a man in his fifties in a business suit. The man worked for what everyone called the CIA.
INSIDE, ON THE TOP FLOOR in the northwest corner, a very large office occupied a quarter of the available floor space. More glass, more money: teak furnishings, leather chairs and couch, mostly buried under an enormous clutter of books, journals, maps and spreadsheets at odds with the clean, modern decor.
In the center of it all, sat a twelve-foot-square teak table on top of which perched a barefoot man in chinos and a t-shirt bearing the image of a finger pointing straight out at the observer under the words: “I’m with stupid.” In his late thirties, the man still sat comfortably in lotus position in one corner of the table contemplating 2000 pieces of a monochromatic jigsaw puzzle. Bright red.
CIA stepped in and closed the door, locking it. Think Tank raised a hand in greeting—eyes on the puzzle.
Threading his way through the piles of books and papers and stacks of puzzles, CIA stopped across the table from the guy he thought of as Think Tank Man. “We need a plan to discredit one of our classified research projects. Make the opposition think we got the opposite results.”
“You can’t leak it through a mole?”
“In this case, the opposition is the American people,” CIA said.
“You said it was classified, did it leak?” Think Tank leaned over the pieces fanned out around him, a blank space left in the center. No pieces were yet connected.
“It will. We need to be prepared for that.” CIA noticed all the pieces seemed to be the same shape.
“And if you declassify it first, the data will be available and everyone will know you’re lying …”
“
… and if we declassify the existence of the project, but don’t make the data itself available …” CIA started.
“ … everyone will know you’re lying,” Think Tank finished. “You’re the CIA, everyone always thinks you’re lying, anyway. Why not just bury it?” He abruptly moved several pieces to the empty center of the table. He didn’t connect them.
“Too many people involved not military that we don’t own. Too many with good civilian credentials. Too believable. It went on too long. We have to discredit.”
“Too long? How long did it go on?” Three more pieces plucked from the mass joined those in the center.
“So far, sixteen years. No idea how many more until it leaks.”
Think Tank blinked but didn’t look up. “What the hell are you researching? The Effect of Domestic Propaganda in an Inter-Generational Paradigm?”
CIA kept his face expressionless. “No, but that’s a hell of an idea. Could you write us a memo?”
Think Tank had written that memo ten years ago. It had gotten him this job. He moved abruptly again, connecting pieces. A red blob swiftly formed. “So what are you researching?”
“Anomalous cognition.”
“You’re shitting me. You spent almost two decades researching psychic shit? Why?”
“It was a Congressionally Directed Activity,” CIA said stiffy, inviting no further comment on the subject of why.
“So now, or whenever someone leaks how much money the public spent footing this bill, you want to convince them it worked?” He stretched and connected three pieces near a corner of the table.
“No,” CIA said, happy to be correcting the smug genius. “We have to convince them it didn’t.”
Think Tank looked up. Back down. He’d lost his place.
“Rats.”
11:35am - Lunching
* * *