by A. R. Barley
Luke grinned. He’d solved the puzzle and found the bad guy. Now he just needed to get off the front porch alive.
Tim was still holding the baseball bat loosely in one hand. As far as Luke could tell it was the only weapon on the porch, but he hadn’t turned around.
Luke did so, slowly.
Carl was...ordinary-looking. He was wearing a sweatshirt and ugly red shoes, but even with the hood down it wasn’t like he’d be easy to pick out in a crowd. His hair was dark, a non-color somewhere between black and brown, his eyebrows were just a little too thin, and his nose was crooked but other than that he was completely ordinary.
It was almost disappointing.
The only thing memorable about him was the gun in his hand.
The gun was small and slim, nothing like the big steel revolver Luke had learned to shoot with or the standard-issue Glock 19 carried by Dante and half the NYPD. Luke finished turning so he was facing Carl straight-on. He balanced carefully on the balls of his feet, his arms stretched wide.
There was maybe six feet of old plank flooring between them. If he was fast enough, if his reflexes were good enough, then he might be able to close the distance before Carl could get a shot off.
If he wasn’t fast enough then he’d be dead before he hit the ground.
He didn’t like those odds.
“Carl.” Luke held out a hand. “My name’s Luke. I’m here to buy a pair of sneakers. My buddy says Tim’s the only one who can get the ones I’m looking for.”
“He’s got a gift.” Carl smiled for approximately thirty-two seconds. Then he frowned. “Have I met you before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You got a name?” Carl asked.
“He’s no one,” Tim interrupted. “He’s not important. You want to come inside? I made fried chicken.”
“What’s your name?”
“Luke Green,” Luke lied happily.
“Where the fuck have I seen you before?” Carl glanced from Luke to Tim and back again. His grip shifted on his gun. He lifted it up and pointed it directly at Luke’s chest. “You’re the asshole.”
“He’s nobody,” Tim said a little louder. No one was listening to him now.
“It was a setup,” Luke said. His mind was going a hundred miles a minute. “You send Timmy here in as a lure. He flirts at the bar, finds someone with a nice phone and a stack of bills in his wallet, and brings them out on the street for you to mug. Am I missing anything?”
Tim had the good sense to duck his head in shame. Of course, that just made the bruising around his eyes all the more obvious.
“Right,” Luke said. “I missed the part where you beat Tim up afterwards. Kind of wrecks the whole golden goose thing you had going on.”
“It’s his own fucking fault.” Carl waved the gun like a maniac. “Little slut didn’t follow the plan—”
“He’s a firefighter,” Tim interjected. “He works for the city.” He took a few nervous steps toward Carl like he was trying to calm the man down. His shoulders looked so damn narrow in the reflected glow from the street lights. The first time they’d met Luke had put his age at twenty-five, but in his pajamas he looked closer to fourteen. “I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“You just wanted to fuck someone new,” Carl said. “You deserved everything you got.” He spat on the ground between them. “You should just be grateful I kept you around after you stopped being useful.”
Creepy.
Also crazy.
A shiver ran down Luke’s spine. The gun was dangerous. It definitely had his attention, but it was the words coming out of Carl’s mouth that had him scared. Crazy couldn’t be negotiated with. It was its own kind of erratic superpower.
And it meant that the gun could go off at any moment.
The way Carl was waving it around, he could hit Luke, Tim, or one of the other houses nearby. It wasn’t the greatest neighborhood in the world but there were kids’ bikes in the yard next door.
Everyone was in danger.
Luke swallowed hard. He needed to keep Carl talking. He needed to take any chance at survival. He needed—
“Hey, honey.” A buttery purr sounded from the darkness. For a moment Luke thought he was hearing things and then Dante materialized from the darkness with a Cheshire-cat smile on his face. He must have come straight from work because he was still wearing his ugly black slacks, but he’d spiked his hair and ditched his jacket for a heather gray Henley.
With his tattooed wings poking out from his shirt’s short sleeves, he looked like an avenging angel and all-around badass. There was no badge on his belt or gun on his hip, just his trademark smile and a hard look in his eyes. It was a side of Dante Luke had never seen before. The persona he wore when he was undercover taking down mob bosses and fighting uber criminals.
All eyes were on him as he walked up the stairs and planted himself firmly between Luke and Carl’s gun.
“Is this the dude you were going to buy the sneakers from?” Dante asked, clearly intent on cultivating his “don’t give a fuck” attitude. “You didn’t tell me he’d be armed. I’d have brought the boys.”
Dante must have gotten the address from Finn, but how had he known that the mugger would be there? More importantly, how had he known to show up ready to throw down? Luke didn’t spend too much time thinking about it.
“I didn’t know,” Luke explained. “I was just coming to see my buddy Tim.”
“Yeah, well, good thing I showed up.” Dante took another step toward Carl, and Luke caught the glint of metal where his shirt separated from the back of his pants. His gun might not be as shiny as the one Carl was waving around, but it would get the job done.
Any other cop would have come onto the porch with his gun in his hand, but Dante wasn’t the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later type. How many years had he spent undercover? He was used to walking into tense situations with just a smile on his face and talking down the worst sort of men. He’d done all of that without flinching, but he’d been afraid to tell Luke his feelings. It was kind of adorable.
Damn, he loved him.
“Put the gun down,” Dante said, and there was nothing adorable about the command in his voice. He moved like a predator and spoke like a general. “You understand me, dickhead?”
For a moment Luke actually thought that it might work. Carl’s eyes were wide. His mouth was half open in disbelief. He couldn’t believe his little intimidation game wasn’t working on someone. Another step—maybe two—and Dante would be able to take the gun away from him.
Then his finger squeezed the trigger.
Boom.
The first shot went wide and Dante lunged forward to slam into him. Boom. The second shot sounded.
Blood spattered across the porch’s wide plank floor. Luke’s heart seized. All he could see was red. He couldn’t tell who it was coming from. Grunts sounded as Carl and Dante tore into each other.
The gun in Dante’s waistband clattered to the ground. Luke lunged forward to grab it. Unlike Dante he hadn’t been taught how to talk down criminals, and his mouth felt like it was full of cotton, but this he could do. He took a stance that dynamite couldn’t shake, took the safety off the weapon, and pointed it straight at Carl’s head.
One warning, that was what his father had always told him. If he got into a live shooter situation, he needed to give one warning.
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” he said.
Blood was blooming across Dante’s shirt sleeve. He was the one who’d been injured, and when he turned slightly he gave Luke a straight shot.
“One warning.” He’d learned the lesson at his father’s knee. “If it really matters, you give one warning and then you shoot the asshole.”
Dante mattered.
Bang. Luke shot and he didn’t miss. The bullet slammed into Carl’s shoulder and sent him stumbling backward.
Crack. Tim’s baseball bat connected with the back of Carl’s head. “That’s for breaking my arm,�
� he shouted. Another swing. This one connected with Carl’s side. “And that’s for making me help you.” He pulled back and wound up for the home run.
“Easy, slugger.” Dante grabbed the end of Tim’s baseball bat before he could do anything else. His face was gray, but he was still standing. “I think he got the message.”
“Call the cops,” Luke ordered as he slid the safety back on the gun and rushed forward to put pressure on Dante’s wound. He wasn’t going to let his medical training go to waste. He needed to make a tourniquet. Maybe if he had a belt—but he didn’t have a belt. Warm blood seeped between his fingers. Why didn’t he have a belt? “You’re going to the hospital.”
“You’ll come to the hospital with me?” Dante asked. “And then we’ll go home together.”
“You couldn’t keep me away. I love you.”
“That the truth?”
“God’s honest.”
“Good. I was a jerk.” Light flared in Dante’s mismatched eyes. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt. I never want you to get hurt. That doesn’t mean I think you’re a kid. It means I love you right back.”
Bells chimed in the distance or maybe that was just sirens. Someone must have finally called the cops, but it was already over. They were safe. Luke’s heart beat triple-time as Dante’s head tilted to meet his in a heart-stopping kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ten years of retirement and Charlie Parsons still looked like a cop from the battered tips of his shoes to the serviceable cut of his hair. At the moment, he was leaning against the exterior wall of Smoke & Bullets sucking on a cigarette. His eyes were glazed from cheap whiskey, good beer, and excitement. He put a hand on Dante’s arm to steady himself. “I ever catch you smoking, I’ll beat your ass.”
Dante rolled his eyes. He had six inches and a good sixty pounds of muscle on his foster father. Even with a hole in his arm and a prescription for hard-core antibiotics, he could take him. “And a happy birthday to you too.”
“Sixty-fucking-eight.” Charlie laughed. “It’s not a birthday. It’s a wake. I wouldn’t have even celebrated, except the kid made a fuss. He’s the one who invited everybody.”
“Yeah, he’s thoughtful like that.” If Dante tilted his head just right he could see Luke through the window, spreading around pizza slices and laughing with a group of good old boys that included Captain Grady. “It’s got to be genetic, because I know he didn’t get it from you.”
Charlie held perfectly still for a long moment. Blood flooded his face, turning his cheeks a bright candy-apple red. For a moment it looked like he might explode. Then he laughed. “Guess he finally told you about that. Used to pretend it was his origin story. Like he was a freaking superhero.”
“He’s pretty super.” Dante hunched his shoulders forward against the cold and gave a tug on his knitted hat. Over the past week Luke’s possessions had started materializing in his house as he picked them up from dry cleaners and borrowed closets all over town. There was now a box of knit caps by the front door, all different colors and patterns, but the cabled gray one was still his favorite. “Did you like his present?”
“Half a sweater?”
“He’ll finish it eventually.” Luke had picked the mosaic pattern to match the intricate tile work Charlie had installed in the Parsons family kitchen. Dante had helped pick out the wool. It was long-wearing, comfortable, and expensive.
“And I’ll wear it.” Charlie smiled around his cigarette. “It’s beautiful. Your present wasn’t too shabby either. I needed a new speaker system, ever since some teenager put his boot through my old one.”
“I’m pretty sure Luke apologized about that. Anyway, the new one’s better. It’s portable. You can take it with you when you move.”
There was a long pause. “You figured that out.”
“I’m a detective, Charlie, not an asshole. All the work you’re doing on the house. Either you’re getting ready to move or you’re getting ready to die.”
His foster father sputtered. “I’m not that old.” He plucked his cigarette from his mouth and tapped the ash against the rough brick wall. “You tell Luke?”
“I figured that was something you’d want to do.” It wasn’t going to be easy. Luke might not spend a lot of time in his basement apartment in Long Island, but it was still technically home. It was where he’d gone back to lick his wounds when Dante broke things off and where he kept the treasures that were too valuable to store anywhere else.
“Eventually.” Charlie’s face was suddenly serious. “It’d be easier if he moved out first. You know all I want is to see you boys settled? That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Sure you are. Grady says you made a big bust the other day. You caught some kind of gay-basher out in Brooklyn. Between that and all the time you spent undercover, you can name your own assignments. But you can’t stick with a woman for more than a day. You’re never going to give me grandkids. And, what about Luke? He’s still living in my damn basement going out dancing until all hours of the night.”
“I’m working on it for Luke too.”
There was a long pause. Charlie peered at him through long gray lashes and dark walnut eyes. He shifted a little bit to look through the window. On the other side of the glass Luke was smiling his soft little half smile. He was still listening to his father’s friends prattle on, but his attention was clearly fixed on the pair standing out on the street.
Charlie let out a low breath. “It’s like that, is it?”
There were probably a dozen better ways to tell Charlie that his sons were dating, but Dante just shrugged. “It’s like that.”
“Hmmph. I never saw that coming.”
“Hope it’s not too weird.”
“You ever think maybe people won’t be okay with it?” Charlie asked. “There’s a lot of guys on the force who watched the two of you grow up. They know you’re brothers—you ever think maybe they’ll have a problem with the two of you getting together?”
Dante had thought of nothing else, every day, for years. That’s why he’d run away. It was why he’d buried himself in his work and avoided too many family dinners to count.
“It doesn’t matter what they think.” It never had. He’d just been too pigheaded to admit it. “The only one whose opinion matters to me is you.”
“And if I say that it is too weird? I’m not okay with my two boys making the beast with two backs? That I don’t think you’re right for Luke?”
“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life doing whatever it takes to prove you wrong.” He couldn’t do anything else. He loved Luke from the tips of his toes to the bottom of his soul, and he was never going to give him up. Not for anything.
“Good enough.” Charlie tilted his head to the side like one of the dusty pigeons that littered the street. “If you hurt him in any way, I’ll come for you with guns blazing. It’ll make the OK Corral look like a first grade field trip. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Rule number one: Don’t hurt Luke.
“I got it,” Dante said.
“Of course, if he does anything to you then it’ll be the same for him. Guns blazing.” Charlie slapped a big hand down on Dante’s shoulder. “Don’t think this gets you off the hook though. I still want grandkids. Lots of them. I don’t care if you foster, adopt, or hire some broad with wide hips. I want to dandle a toddler on my knee again before I get too much older.”
“One,” Dante negotiated. “Maybe two.” Any more than that and they wouldn’t fit in the apartment in Inwood. He’d reached out to the owner two days earlier to see about buying it, and she’d finally gotten back to him that afternoon. The price was more than he’d hoped and less than he’d expected. If Luke was okay eating at home for the next year or so, Dante might even be able to scrape up the cash for the down payment.
The door to the bar opened and noise spilled out onto the street. “Come on, you weirdos.” Luke popped out with a smile on his
face and eyes gleaming. Damn, he looked good. His clothes were practically formal, a crisp button-down with dove-gray pinstriping, a pair of good jeans, and the supple black leather boots that haunted his jeans. “This party’s for you,” Luke told his father. “The guest of honor can’t keep disappearing and you—” he jammed a finger in Dante’s direction “—stop encouraging him. There are plenty of people inside for both of you to talk about.”
“They’re all cops,” Charlie complained.
“You’re both cops.”
Charlie waved his hands, objecting. “We’re not talking about cop stuff.” He stubbed out his cigarette and went back inside to a fresh round of cheers and “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
“What were the two of you talking about?” Luke asked.
“You.” Dante laughed and grabbed Luke by the arm, pulling him in close. “Your dad was saying you haven’t been home in a while. He thinks you’re out dancing until dawn. He’s worried.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Damn straight, but he’s still going to worry.” It was part of being a family. The same way Luke was going to worry when Charlie finally announced that he was going to move out of Long Island. Dante wrapped his arms around Luke’s waist, fitting their bodies together. Luke didn’t smell like oatmeal soap anymore. He smelled like the citrus shower gel they shared and the pepperoni pizza he’d been eating all night. It was absolutely delicious. Dante nuzzled his lips against his neck. “I told him that you’ve been spending time with me.”
“Did he have anything to say about that?”
“Yep, he said if you break my heart, he’s going to make you paint the entire house.”
“He already made me paint the house.”
“Then he’ll make you do it again,” Dante lied with a song in his heart. “Of course, it might help him worry less if he knew you had someplace permanent to stay in the city.”
“Someplace permanent.”
“Yeah.” Dante had made room for Luke’s clothes in his closet and put a box by the door for his collection of knit hats. He’d whispered words of love and adoration to him every night. He hadn’t asked him to move in. Not officially. Not yet. He cleared his throat. “Luke Parsons, I know I’m a sorry son of a bitch—you definitely deserve better—but will you make me the happiest man in the world and move in with me?”