Father Figure: M/M Mpreg Gay Romance (Never Too Late Book 4)

by Aiden Bates

  Oliver shook his head. He couldn't let himself think like that. That way lay madness. Sam had been manipulated just like he had.

  He looked up potential causes for nausea. Maybe he had a stomach flu, but it was more likely that the nausea was just a response to his own emotional distress. Just as he'd thought, he was a delicate emotional little flower and needed to toughen up.

  He got a message from Sam during the next week. His pulse rose, and he turned his head to puke as soon as it entered his inbox. Jake poked his head over the wall between their workstations, but he didn't say anything. He just shook his head and went back to whatever it was he was doing.

  Oliver's hand shook when he opened the message, but it wasn't anything personal. Oliver needn't have worried, or hoped. It was just a request for him to look through the evidence from the 1992 fire for evidence of any trophies such as were found at the 1967 fire. Nina and Devlin had both been cc'ed.

  Oliver snarled at the screen, unable to express much beyond wordless rage. He was too good, the lab was too good, to be reduced to the role of servants, getting told to snap to at any request that might come up.

  Then he took a deep and calming breath, letting it out slowly. Losing his temper wouldn't get him anywhere. Instead, he considered how long it would take him to process another rape kit, do a technical review on another, and handle one other issue that came through. Then he hit the reply all button. Estimated 72 hours until delivery. He didn't bother to sign it. The message was clear enough.

  Nina came out from her office ten minutes later. "I'm proud of you," she said, putting a hand on his back. "Devlin is unhappy, but I'll deal with him. He needs to learn not to meddle. Good for you, for standing up for yourself."

  Oliver beamed. It was the nicest thing he'd heard in a while.

  He worked on the Cooper Block evidence when he was in between tasks on other jobs over the next three days. A lot of the time spent on processing a rape kit was spent waiting; samples could spend eight hours at a stretch in the machine. He went through the evidence, still in its bags, while the machine did its work.

  Much like the first Cooper Block fire, there were a handful of artifacts that didn't make sense for the context in which they were found. He found a knife, which had been buried under rubble. No one in the building had identified it as theirs. He found a Saint Barbara medallion. And he found a painted rock, with blood on the underside.

  He dutifully waited until he was done with the DNA extraction he was already working on before he cleaned that up, documented his efforts, and moved on to the next step in the DNA process for the kit. He asked Jake to prep the samples from the old items, because he was in the middle of working on the rape kit and didn't want to have to take the time to change before working on the blood samples. Jake was on board, and got those samples ready to be processed.

  Once Oliver had gotten the kit samples ready for the PCR, he got them onto the machine and let them run. Then he sent the message to Sam, to Nina, and to Devlin. He cc'ed Jake as well, since Jake had done the physical handling of the samples. The next day they would switch it up, by mutual agreement, because the Cooper Block case was Oliver's case.

  Sam didn't reply to the message. When Oliver got to work the next morning, Devlin wanted to know why the samples had been handed off to Jake Nenci. Nina had Oliver's back, though, explaining proper procedures against cross-contamination in such minute detail that Oliver couldn't help but grin.

  Oliver ignored them and got back to work on the blood sample. The knife, as it turned out, had a blood sample too. He worked to extract DNA from that sample, although he had minimal hope of finding anything. Fire wasn't kind to biological samples.

  The process for getting any potential DNA out of the blood was consuming, and it was fifty-four hours before they could claim that they were finished. That was before the final report was submitted for review, but that was out of Oliver's hands. Under other circumstances he might have called to tell the detective in question that the report had been submitted and to give a preliminary heads-up about his findings, but that wouldn't be appropriate here.

  That hurt. Oliver did that sort of thing for other departments. He'd done it for Ryan Tran, whose hatred for Sam was legendary. Oliver's feelings about Sam might be complicated now, but he still loved Sam. He should be able to reach out and give him information related to a case that they were both on, for crying out loud.

  It would be a terrible idea, though, and Oliver knew it. Sure, Sam had been manipulated, but he'd also known about Oliver's feelings for him. He'd know that Oliver would never tell him no. And Devlin thought of Sam as some kind of chess piece, or maybe a reward. Something that he could use, at any rate, because Oliver's obvious feelings had made him a target.

  Oliver bore responsibility for that. It was up to Oliver to contain himself. He would never show that kind of partiality again. He couldn't afford to. If the results had him vomiting into a trashcan on a daily basis, he needed to learn to keep his thoughts to himself.

  As he sat alone in his silent apartment, though, he couldn't help but get resentful. Everyone else in the world seemed to be able to have a normal, romantic relationship. What was it about him that made him the butt of everyone's joke? Was it because of his choice in alphas? Surely everyone involved knew that it was no more of a choice than anyone else with a pull toward someone. Was it his own nerdiness? Oh, we can use him for his brain to solve our cases, let's use him for our own entertainment too?

  That couldn't be it. No one treated Jake like the town fool. Jake wasn't a joke. So why was Oliver?

  Bitterness wasn't going to get him what he wanted, but neither was anything else. Oliver needed to accept reality. He wasn't going to change the alphas in Cold Case. He didn't have control over them. All he could do was change himself. That was the only factor that he controlled.

  Someone out there somewhere had to have a book or a webpage or something for omegas, a self-help resource on calming one's own desires without suppressants. Most of them were probably quacks, but Oliver couldn't go on like this. He had to find a way to toughen himself up.

  Once he'd wanted to have it all. He'd wanted an alpha, a house, children, a yard. He was ready to moderate his wants. This apartment would be his home for the rest of his life. It was a good apartment. It was safe, and it was near the work that gave his life meaning. All that he needed to do was find a way to heal the ache inside when he thought about Sam.

  He grabbed his laptop and started searching. He expected to find a certain number of crackpots. Some swore by drinking eight glasses of cucumber juice every day. That made Oliver's scientific mind skeptical. Cucumber juice might be very hydrating, but it had no known effect on mental health or on libido. Some swore by a combination of essential oils.

  And then there were the naysayers. Plenty of essayists had written about why it would be wrong for an omega to even try such a thing. One in particular struck Oliver as exceptionally offensive. "Omegas are naturally built for desire," the author wrote. "To attempt to kill that desire is to kill off a part of ourselves. If you've been through a trauma, seek counseling or find an alpha who will heal you. If you're older than a typical unclaimed omega, find an alpha who will love you in spite of that. Don't shut out half of your soul."

  The author's name was Chris Nenci. The article had been published in Modern Omega, back in 1990.

  ***

  Sam stared at his screen. He put his elbows on the desk, ran his fingers along his scalp, and tugged at his hair. "This is ridiculous," he groaned, to no one in particular.

  Morris looked up. "What's ridiculous? The fact that the entire squad's been blackballed by the lab because you couldn't keep it in your pants?"

  'You're hilarious." Sam couldn't manage more than that weak reply. He knew that Morris was right. "This Masshole Hatfields and McCoys nonsense. I can't untangle it. I can barely make heads or tails of the older records."

  Morris didn't scoot his chair like other guys did. The others all pu
shed like normal people. Morris treated the wheeled chairs like his personal playground. He scooted past Langer and over to Sam's desk. "Okay. Why are you looking at Salem trial court records from 1691? I mean, that's before the witch trials, buddy. You're not going to find anything interesting in there."

  "On the contrary. I've found two cases of 'unnatural men bearing forth children' — so, omegas—one case of a drunken man who 'became befuddled by strong drink, sold to him by Amos Cloud the Frenchman near ye Docks,' and lay down next to his neighbor's wife to go to sleep. The neighbor happened to be already in bed with his wife. It turned into a delightful threesome until the neighbor stopped by."

  "Why did the neighbor stop by in the middle of the night?" Morris scratched his head.

  "The records don't say. It was a charming week in the stocks for everyone involved, plus a flogging for the wife because that's how things rolled back then." Sam shuddered. "Next time I hear someone talking about how they were born in the wrong time, I'm going to make them read this stuff. If they can read the handwriting."

  Morris nodded. "Sounds like a plan. But seriously. Why are you reading this when you've got an arsonist to chase down?"

  Sam resisted the urge to mimic Morris, because he was learning to be a better person. "Because. We've got those things that… that he found in the evidence locker, right?"

  Morris held his hands up. "It's your case, Nenci. I've been staying out of it, as much as I can."

  "Okay. Well… he found a couple of things in the evidence locker that were on the scene that were out of place. And those things had blood on them." Sam looked back at the screen.

  "Right. Because blood at a fire in 1992 has a lot to do with records from the trial court in Salem from three hundred and one years before that. With you so far." Morris gave him the thumbs up with a big, cheesy grin.

  "So let's pretend that the blood he found belongs to our suspect, and not to someone else who was on the scene. I mean, there's plenty of other reasons that the blood could have gotten onto the underside of a painted rock in a building that collapsed, right? It could have fallen onto someone's head." Sam sighed. "Or someone could have seen the killer and attacked him. We don't know. Even if… he gets the DNA from those cooked bits, we're not going to know unless the guy's been in the system or unless we find something to compare it to."

  "In 1691." Morris nodded. "Gotcha."

  "No, dumbass. If I'm going to go in front of a judge, even a friendly judge, and get a warrant to make some guy let me stick a q-tip in his mouth, I'm going to need to have a damn good reason and he just looks shifty isn't it. I need a motive. The only people with motive to lash out against the Couchers this way are the Marstens."

  Morris grimaced and tilted his head to the side. "They're going to kill fifty outsiders, plus the ten from the 1992 fire, over a business dispute?"

  Sam tapped the screen. "See, here's the thing. It's not a business dispute. I thought the same thing at first, but no. At the '67 fire the killer left a calling card—jewelry belonging to an omega who had been claimed by the Coucher head of household at the time, but had been promised to the Marsten head of household. That fight went all the way back to 1904. The ring? That had been cut off of the poor guy's finger in the 1920s.

  "That's not all though. If you go back through the historical record, all you see is these two families fighting. For hundreds of years. They've been butting heads, whether in the courts or in the streets, since Salem was still a dusty little outpost. Listen to this." Sam cleared his throat. "Third ye May 1674. Benjamin Coucher brought suit against Perseverance Marsten for ye slaying of three Indentured Servants ye Thursday last. Marsten insisted that he did but seek recompense for the theft of thirty head of cattle."

  Morris' eyes went flat. "Human lives aren't cattle."

  "It was a different time. We're better than that now. This was the same village that thought it was an awesome idea to hang nineteen women because someone else got high off moldy bread." Sam shook his head. "Anyway, it's not done. Both Coucher and Marsten got down to it right there in the middle of the courtroom, ‘with Coucher delivering so great a blow to Marsten that he did not rise for three days and three nights, and when he did he did walk with a limp.' The court decided that God favored Coucher since he delivered such a mighty victory."

  "All righty then. I guess that's better than deciding that humans and cattle are the same." Morris ran his hand through his hair. "But why did Coucher steal the cattle in the first place?"

  "Who knows? Who knows if he even did?" Sam threw his hands in the air. "It's not relevant to the case. You can see, though, why I kept wanting to go back further."

  "It's like you know it's got to have an origin point but you don't want to find the origin point." Morris rubbed his face. "For all we know the feud started back in England. I mean, talk to Langer's mate, he's the lawyer, but I think you should be good if you just document that the feud is long-standing." He gestured at the screen. "This is pretty long-standing." Morris scooted back to his desk.

  Sam did call Langer's omega. Doug Morrison was one of the best defense attorneys in Massachusetts, if not the country, and he was in high demand. He was also absolutely besotted with Langer, for reasons that Sam couldn't quite understand. He guessed he didn't have to. Morrison listened to Sam explain the situation, and then he hummed for a second. "Well, here's the thing. I'm a defense lawyer. I know what the evidentiary standard should be in order to get a warrant, and I know how I'd fight it after the fact, but I haven't seen the rest of your evidence. I'm going to give you another number. That number goes to my buddy Chris, he's a prosecutor for the Superior Court down in Plymouth County. He'll be able to go into greater detail about whether or not this would pass a judge's smell test." Doug chuckled. "I've got to say, I've never seen a warrant that included information from the seventeenth century, unless it was for art theft."

  Sam thanked him, and then he called Chris. Chris was a lot more helpful, for obvious reasons. "I think that Doug might have played prosecutor in Mock Trial once or twice, but he's more interested in being a pain in my ass than in doing my job." He chuckled. "I think it's definitely helpful for you to establish that the feud is of long-standing. I'm a little weirded out by just how long-standing it is. Why is this the only time that anyone's been brought to justice for it?"

  "A lot of things were kept quiet. What can I say? Nobody sees nothin'. You know how it is." Sam grinned for what felt like the first time in weeks.

  "Yeah, I hear that one a lot. Go in prepared to show reams of history, but make your request very succinct. If you want to be most successful, have a suspect or two in mind. They'll never give you a warrant to just type everyone in the family."

  "Thanks, Chris."

  "Anytime."

  Sam's next task was to sit down and go through a list of everyone in the Marsten family who might have committed the murders, and eliminate them based on their physical description. There weren't many people left in the family who were old enough to have set a fire in 1967 and in 1992. At least, there weren't many who were still alive today.

  He had a list of ten who fit the bill. He eliminated three because they were women. The person on that surveillance tape had a distinctly masculine appearance. He wrote off another four because of height issues. That left him with three, all brothers. Charles Marsten would have been eighteen in 1967 and forty-three in 1992. He certainly could have done the deed. Dale Marsten would have been twenty-one in 1967, and already had a record for various kinds of aggressive behavior. He'd have been forty-six in 1992. Finally, Isaiah Marsten had been twenty-five in 1967, and fifty in 1992. It certainly wasn't beyond reason that he might have been able to set the fire.

  Sam smacked himself in the face. This was ridiculous. These were men of privilege, wealthy people who ran a real estate empire all across the North Shore. They wouldn't get their hands dirty with something like arson. They wouldn't risk losing everything, and going to prison, just to perpetuate a feud. They'd hire someone
. They'd parcel it out to a cousin.

  Of course, Sam himself always said that they never met the smart criminals.

  He left the office that night and went home to his empty house. Once he got inside, though, he realized that he wasn't alone. He picked up on the scent of sandalwood and omega as soon as he crossed the threshold. "Pretty Boy," he growled. "Does your alpha know where you are?"

  "Pretty sure he does, yeah." Ryan Tran stepped out of the shadows and into the light. He was a beautiful man. He'd always been beautiful, despite the fact that his picture was in the dictionary under the word hostile. "The more important question is, do you know why I'm here, Nenci?"

  "Robles isn't enough man for you?" Nenci kept his head up and his back straight, but his palms were damp with sweat.

  "Wrong answer. I've already had a little chat with Lt. Devlin." Tran rubbed his knuckles. "It was illuminating, I have to say. I'd planned to talk about your behavior toward omegas, or more to the point toward one omega."