by Adira August
Cam looked through his image file. “Well, damn.”
“They changed it,” Asher said. “Way back when that happened, everybody could see that picture. Then they changed it, took this one off the internet, and said nothing happened, it was all normal.”
Hunter finally spoke up. “These researchers said there was no change in the results from their machines while burning planes were sticking out of skyscrapers and everyone in the world with a TV was watching? Are you sure you understood?”
“I’m fourteen, not four.”
“These were the very same researchers who published images like this Olympic one, claiming it was evidence of focused human consciousness affecting their devices?”
“Yes, I told you.”
“Cam?”
“I’m on it,” he said, scanning files.
“But that’s not the important part,” the boy insisted.
“What is the important part?” Twee asked.
“Look,” he said, pointing at the 9/11 image. “The machines didn’t go crazy after that happened and everybody found out and turned on their TVs and stuff. They went crazy before. Like before the planes even took off.”
Everyone stared at the monitor.
“Soooo,” it was Natani, feeling her way. “If only a few people knew what was planned, where was all this powerful consciousness coming from?”
“Right!” Asher seemed relieved an adult got it. “That’s all it could be, see? People on the other side showed up because once the men decided to go through with it or got on the planes, then it was going to happen. So the other guys kinda proved it. But then they changed it. That’s why Minnie got mad and did her own thing.”
“Here it is,” Cam said.
“They moved the line,” Twee said.
“But why?” Natani mused.
Cam looked at Asher. “Why did they come? If that’s actual people in—heaven I guess—why were they there?”
“‘Cause a lot of people were going to die,” he said as if he found Cam’s question strange. “Nobody dies alone.”
“LEAVING NOW, Ms. Houston,” Leon said from the doorway.
“Have the other boys left, already?” Anne Tussey winced as she shifted in the chair.
“Most last night. Carter and Holcomb left while the cop was here.” Leon looked worried. “You should get to a doc about that back.”
She smiled. “I should do a lot of things. Don’t worry, Max will be here all the time now.”
“I don’t see him,” Leon grumbled.
“You need to go,” she told him. “Come here, I can’t get up.” She held her arms open and he sank down next to her and gave her a careful hug.
“I love you, you know. I couldn’t have gotten here without you,” she told him.
“None of us coulda got anywhere without you,” he said, his voice husky with his sadness.
She put her palm on the side of his face and searched his eyes. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”
He picked up her hand and kissed it. “No matter. They’re gonna need to hear from you, so, you need to be here.”
He stood and turned, and left her without a look back.
She flipped the side lever on the recliner and stifled a yelp as her body changed position. She’d be fine. The bruises would fade, her shoulder joint heal. She thanked God her neck hadn’t been injured badly. She was getting old, too old for this kind of business.
“THAT’S WHY SHE’S in hiding,” Twee said. “They want to destroy it all, before people find out.”
Hunter looked up. “They, Twee?”
“If we want to know who ‘they’ is, we ask the question you always ask, cui bono? Who benefits?”she said.
“Who benefits from keeping it secret?” Natani asked.
“Or maybe who benefits from it being known?” Cam spoke up. “You know how much doping there is in sports? Just to win a medal?”
Everyone was quiet, not sure where he was going.
“We fight each other for every scrap of everything. If this is true, if we really are just—stuck in a doorway—all that doesn’t matter. I can’t take the medals with me.”
Twee smiled gently. “You think the lip gloss industry will collapse?”
“At least the diamond-studded handbag one,” he said. “Maybe people will stop torturing themselves and their loved ones with horrible medical treatments to stay alive for a few more months if they think there’s more than nothing after they die. Maybe not being afraid to die would make us…” He shook his head.
Cam never talked about his Huntington’s, about the inevitability of it, of the long, slow, painful, humiliating decline. No one but Hunter knew and Cam wanted to keep it that way.
Hunter stood up, absently rapping the table, deciding what orders to give and trying to remember anything he’d forgotten.
“Natani, I know it’s thin, but figure out if we have enough or can get enough for a warrant. I want to go up to Houston’s. No more playing nice, this is a murder and it sounds like she’s on a list.”
“Might get some leverage out of the fake driver’s license,” she said. “I’ll work on it.”
“Good. Asher, I have to go out. Will you help Cam and Ms. Twee while I’m gone?”
He rolled his dark eyes. “Not four. I can play some games on my cell.”
“The lieutenant was serious,” Twee told him. “You can be a real help to me and Cam, if you want. You don’t have to, though. I do want to put that machine together and I’m not even sure what it is.”
“ALFWE,” he said, grinning. “Alternating Low Frequency Wave Emitter. ‘Alf’ for short.”
“Right behind you,” Cam told her as she led Asher away to her lab. The boy was looking a bit smitten. “Priorities?” he asked Hunter.
“If Gordi was right, our John Doe was killed while Asher was at the house with us. Get more of his story, who influenced him. The timing is too coincidental to be coincidental. Someone got us to protect Asher and this data Twee found. Asher knows who, but …”
“He probably doesn’t know he knows,” Cam finished.
“Yeah. Use the footage from last night and whatever Merisi brought back. See how many of these men you can identify.”
“You going to see a billionaire?”
“Maybe two,” Hunter said. “Merisi, you catch all this? Ready to lean on some VIPs?”
He grinned. “Always ready to lean on whatever guys you point me at.”
“I bet you are,” he said. “And, Cam? I know it’s a lot to ask, but-”
“-you want a presentation on the lifetime of research in the backpack and a timeline of everyone involved for the past twenty-four hours. By the time you get back.”
“You are my champion,” Hunter said.
Cam cocked a brow. “That’s one way to put it.”
1:40pm - Issues
* * *
“What do you think?” Hunter asked as he turned up Speer Boulevard
“It feels like a lot of government bullshit,” he said. “If it is, if ‘they’ is CIA or NSA, or whatever three-letter secret police asshole group our victim was part of, we’re wasting our time. And we might get ourselves killed for nothing.”
“Might be private. The victim could have worked for industrial or banking interests.”
“It’s all the same thing.” Merisi’s head dropped back; he stared out the window.
“He could have been one of the ‘Army men’ protecting Houston and her data.”
“Then he was stupid. And so is she. Even if what Twee said is true, if the evidence is totally valid, replicated, the statistics validated, all that science shit, people won’t believe it.”
Hunter headed into downtown. “Why not?”
Merisi wondered if the question was a test. Hunter Dane liked testing people. “You know exactly why.” Hunter didn’t answer. “They don’t want to. The ones that do want to, already believe it. The ones that don
’t, won’t.”
“Not even with a lot of ‘science shit’ making it fact?”
Merisi barked a hard laugh and sat up. “No one’s killing anyone over secrets from Nine-Eleven. Nobody reads past a headline anymore unless they want to troll the comment box.”
“A lot don’t,” Hunt said. “But I also think a lot of people are like Twee. Skeptical but not cynical. She accepts evidence for what it is. She wants to make sure, but she’s not avoiding the truth.”
“Twee’s a special case.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Hunter agreed fervently. “So what’s someone going to kill Houston over?”
“Got me. I had a guy kill another guy in a bar for drinking his beer while he was in the can. Know what he asked me when I arrested him?”
Hunt shook his head.
“If I’d get the price of the beer out of the victim’s pocket for him.”
PULLING INTO the entrance to an underground parking garage, Hunter entered a code, and the barrier lifted. Merisi looked around curiously. The large, dim space was empty.
“This is weird.”
Hunter drove slowly to the end of the garage and around a concrete wall to a small parking area and elevator.
“This area and everything about access is private information, detective.”
“Right. Isn’t this the Coloradan Hotel? I can’t afford coffee in the breakfast room. This where the VIP is?”
“Yes and yes,” Hunt said, sending a text. “Let’s go.”
They waited in front of the single elevator. There was no button, only a keypad.
“You don’t have the code for this?”
“Four people have the code for this elevator that I know of, and I am definitely not one of them.”
The door opened.
“Wood. Good to see you,” Hunter greeted the bodyguard but didn’t offer his hand or move to enter.
Kevin Woodward came out, and the door closed behind him. “Detective Merisi, right?” Merisi nodded. Woodward was a little taller than Merisi, wore his auburn hair military short, and was thoroughly professional.
He opened a lockbox attached to the wall. The cops divested themselves of their weapons, placing them inside. Woodward locked the box, then patted them down. Walking to the end of the wall, he did a visual check before he returned to them and coded the elevator open.
It wasn’t until they were inside and rising that he answered Hunter’s greeting.
“Good to see you, too, Lieutenant. Bronco running okay?” His lips twitched.
“You knew!” Hunter realized. “That s.o.b. put a whole new engine in it!” Hunter accused, referring to Woodward’s billionaire boss who’d stolen his vehicle during the Tamil jars case. “Hang on. If you’re here, that means Benedict Hart’s here?”
Woodward shook his head. “I’m staffing Mr. Nicholas today.”
The elevator stopped, the door slid open, and Merisi’s mouth dropped. Waiting in a small entrance hall was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen in person. Or in movies.
Nicholas Hart was brown-haired, blue-eyed, even-featured and not a gym bunny. But his cleanly drawn winglike brows, sculpted lips, slightly cleft chin, smooth skin, strong jaw, broad forehead, the soft waves in his thick hair, the sparkling intelligence in his eyes, all combined into something eons beyond the word “handsome.”
The three-piece bespoke suit didn’t hurt, either. Mike flashed on him in black knit briefs on his knees, sweat-soaked, straining toward Mike’s cock—which in reality tingled alarmingly over his tightening balls. He looked away, fished out his notebook, and waited for Hunter to exit before him.
Hunt acted as if he had no idea his partner wanted to jump all over Nicky Hart, who Hunt recognized was movie-star attractive. He’d dropped Nicky off here last night instead of taking him home to Jag. Nicky’s older, richer, very Dominant but sadly straight brother Ben owned the Coloradan Hotel.
Hunter wondered if Jag was more understanding than Cam of late poker night changes in plans. He threw off the thoughts, focusing on Nicholas Hart and introductions. Hart led them through the penthouse to a polished wood bar in front of an open kitchen area.
Hunter got straight to the point. “Did you know Hanging Valley development is missing from maps?”
“Oh, sure.”
Hart got a laptop from an open alcove next to the kitchen and set it up on the bar. The detectives needed to know if the military or some government agency hid Hanging Valley because of Hart’s military contracts. But the billionaire seemed too open about the issue for it to be connected to his classified work.
Hart searched for a site. “The development isn’t missing; it’s hidden.” He rotated the laptop so Hunter could see it.
Merisi leaned in as Hart expanded the screen until the image was as close to the ground as the satellite image allowed. This close, it was obvious some of the rocks and bushes were pictures of bits of the surrounding countryside. They had clean, irregular edges and had been placed over homes and roads, outbuildings and driveways. At normal magnification, they were indistinguishable from natural vegetation.
“They used to put gray boxes over everything they hid,” Nicky told him. “But it only alerted people something was hidden there.”
“They do a lot of this, you said?” Hunter asked him, zooming in and out, the evidence of concealment appearing and disappearing.
“Anyone can request to have their property excluded from a public satellite image.”
“But in this case everyone in the development would have to have asked.”
“I asked,” the young billionaire told him. “When I planned Hanging Valley, I wanted a place we could live … unmolested. It was selfish, I suppose. Brother Ben says I have too much money and too little sense.” He grinned.
“When people buy the properties, they don’t change it?”
“They don’t buy property. They buy the right to build and occupy. I own Hanging Valley.”
Merisi looked up. “Like a condo development?”
Hart smiled. “Exactly.” He turned to Hunter. “So who’s dead?”
“Detective, have the morgue forward an image of the victim to your phone,” Hunter told Merisi. He knew Merisi could grab the image himself. Hunter Dane was playing for time.
Mike Merisi played along, frowning over his cell.
“So, how did people find out about the place? Doesn’t sound like a standard real estate listing.”
“Just word of mouth, really. I invited some people. You’ve met Giacomo Ferri. He knew Camden Snow from his skiing business and told him. That kind of thing.”
Giacomo Ferri was Jag’s real name—he was also Nicholas Hart’s husband. But with Merisi present, Hart wouldn’t let on he had more than a passing acquaintance with Hunter.
“I see. I was really impressed David Morganfeld lives there.”
“That was Ben. Knew Morganfeld from a charity concert. Morganfeld has ties to KLSC radio by Mount Morrison, so Hanging Valley was perfect for him. He brought his cousin Minnie in. You meet the Imbrie twins yet? …”
Hunt ignored the story and held out a hand to Merisi who put his phone into it.
“.. so you can chalk them up to Avia,” Hart finished, referring to his brother’s girlfriend.
“It’s a nice community,” Hunter told him. “Would you mind looking at this? See if you know him?”
Nicky Hart took the phone and recoiled a little at the image. “You didn’t have a driver’s license picture?” He studied the image. “I don’t think I ever saw him before. Someone killed him?”
Hunter returned Merisi’s phone. “We’re not sure what happened yet. We won’t take more of your time. Thanks for seeing us.”
“NOW WHAT?” Merisi asked as Hunter drove them out of the garage onto the one-way street. “Anybody else who’ll just give it up without being leaned on?”
“I could see how much you wanted to lean on Nicky Hart.”
; Merisi blushed. “Cam told you.”
“He mentioned it in passing, no details. It’s fine, Mike, you didn’t know. Even if you did, some couples aren’t exclusive.”
“Right. So where are we going?”
“Morgue. I want to see the evidence for myself.”
Merisi was quiet for a while. “Cam’s a Dom, isn’t he?”
“He is that.”
“You’re submissive?”
Hunter heard the note of skepticism. “It’s a spectrum; people move along it. I’m one of those.”
“So … you Dom, too?”
“Sometimes. Never with Cam.” He thought the fact he exclusively dominated women was more information than Merisi needed to get to his issue. Hunter waited for Mike to decide to talk or not. He was quiet so long Hunt thought he was done.
“So,” Mike began a few blocks from the morgue. “If he brought someone else like, home or wherever—would you just go along?”
“You mean if he didn’t discuss it with me first?”
“Yeah.”
Hunter parked in a DPD space and turned off the car, but didn’t make a move to get out.
“In my experience, if there’s never been a discussion and a Dom brings home a third, the sub might go along no matter how he feels about it to please his lover. But that can destroy a serious relationship. Trust is everything.”
Mike considered this and then unsnapped his seat belt. Discussion over. Hunter reached for his own release—and the 1812 Overture sounded from his breast pocket.
“AFTERNOON, SIR,” Hunter greeted Captain Horace VanDevere—technically, in a departmental organizational chart kind of way—still his boss. “Dispatch said to report to you?”
VanDevere was a walking ad for the virile middle-aged American male: iron-gray hair, perpetual tan, believer in all things his fundamentalist church preached about the abomination of sexual deviation. He was also a good cop and a good captain of the Homicide Bureau.