“Hmm? Yeah, sure.” He was staring out the side window as if afraid to look anywhere else. Niles had been almost certain he’d seen someone lure Patrick into the back room around midnight, but Patrick wasn’t acting much like a guy who’d gotten laid or sucked off or whatever he’d done back there. He was acting like a guy going to his execution.
Once again, Niles found himself wondering just what Patrick’s relationship with his family was like. He’d nearly panicked when he’d realized that he’d missed the last MAX train, at least until Niles had offered to give him a ride so that he didn’t need to call home or take a cab. It was out of his way—Niles could almost have walked home from the club to his historic Victorian in Northwest—but Patrick had been so distressed that he couldn’t leave the guy hanging, especially since Jordan had already taken off and Rosie was heading in the entirely opposite direction.
“You know, Patrick . . .” Niles sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair as he pulled to the curb in front of the Craftsman-style bungalow his intern pointed to. He wasn’t really sure what he wanted to say, but Patrick seemed like he needed something, even if Niles had no idea what. If he was right that Patrick wasn’t out to his family yet, but moving in that direction, the least Niles could do was offer him a sympathetic ear. “Look, my cell number is on the list of employee contact numbers. If you ever have any trouble or need anything, even just to talk, you can give me a call, all right?”
The intern nodded, never meeting Niles’s eyes. “Sure, um, Niles. Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow. Well, later today, I guess.”
“Yeah. See you then.”
With his head hung, Patrick closed the car door behind him. Niles tracked his progress up the front walk to the house and waited while he fumbled with his keys. The back of his neck prickled; the sensation of being watched sent a shiver rippling down his spine, but all the blinds and curtains he could see seemed to be closed and the street was deserted at nearly 2 a.m. Then the porch light came on and someone opened the door for Patrick. The feeling faded, and when the door shut again, Niles drove away.
He gave up trying to sleep at five o’clock, after a few hours of staring at the ceiling and dozing fitfully, his restlessness fueled by a nameless and shapeless anxiety. The elegantly cozy house he’d bought after the first Phoenix Force game went platinum felt too cold and empty, each creak of the house startling Niles just as he’d started to nod off again.
Finally, he flung the covers back, pulled on a sweatshirt and flannel pajama bottoms over his boxers, and shuffled downstairs to his desk in the living room. At some point since he’d gotten home, it had begun raining in earnest, a stiff wind pelting water against the leaded glass windows. Even with all the city lights, there were too many shadows in the house, and Niles circled the room, switching on table lamps and lighting the gas fireplace.
A crash from the front yard brought him springing to his feet, his heart racing. With a longing look at the empty coffeemaker, Niles bypassed the kitchen and undid the chain and dead bolts on the front door. His porch furniture was all still in place, despite the best efforts of the gusting wind, but the gate between the tall hedges that bordered his front yard swung wildly, knocking against the stones lining the path from the sidewalk to the porch.
Sighing at his own jumpiness, he slipped his bare feet into the nearest pair of shoes and clutched his robe around himself. The stinging rain drove against his cheeks like needles as he dashed up the walk to close and latch the gate. His glasses were quickly becoming too water-spotted to see much, but it was useless to look around anyway. Whichever passerby had decided to unlatch the gate, they were no doubt long gone.
As he reached the porch again, his cell phone rang from where it sat on the hallway table beside the mail. Cursing over yet another delay between him and a hot cup of coffee, he toed off his shoes and removed his useless glasses. And promptly slipped on an envelope he’d either missed or dropped when he’d gathered up the mail from beneath the slot in the door on Saturday. He caught himself on the table and snatched the phone to his ear in a single, graceless lurch.
“Yeah?” he gasped.
“Niles? You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, Jordie.” Shivering, he crouched to pick up the letter, frowning at it. “What the hell are you calling me for this time of morning?”
“Well, you’re awake, aren’t you?”
“Doesn’t answer my question.” He squinted and turned the envelope over in his hands. There was no return address, but that wasn’t unusual for things like leaflets and credit card offers. His address was neatly printed in Times New Roman on the front, but there was no “To the resident at . . .” to indicate it was junk mail. Weird. It was probably still junk, but curiosity compelled him not to drop it in the shredder.
He could practically hear Jordan’s nonchalant shrug. “I’m just heading home. Thought I’d offer to take you to breakfast before I went in to work.”
“Damn, whoever you went home with must have been good if you’re just now leaving.”
“Eh, he was okay. I just need to give up on twinks. Think I’m getting too old for them. Not enough experience to give a really killer blowjob. Kind of fun to show them how it’s done, though.”
Niles huffed a brief laugh, shaking his head. “Whatever floats your boat, man.”
“So, you in for breakfast or not?”
“Yeah, okay, breakfast sounds good.” He dropped the envelope on the table with the rest of the mail and gave the coffeemaker one last yearning glance before heading upstairs.
“Thought so. I’m almost there. See you in a few.”
“Mm-hmm. Just let yourself in. I’m hopping in the shower.”
“Right. Okay.” There was silence on the line as Jordan failed to disconnect as Niles expected him to. He waited, letting his damp robe fall at the threshold of the master bath. “You sure you’re all right?” Jordan finally asked, concern evident in his voice.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Something seemed wrong when you answered the phone.”
“Nah, I just nearly killed myself trying to get to it in time. I’d had to go outside to close the gate. So except for being way too short on sleep—for which I hold you and Rosie completely responsible, in case you’re wondering—I’m fine.”
“Okay.” Jordan didn’t sound convinced, but Niles wasn’t going to stand around shivering, trying to reassure him.
“I’m starting the shower now. See you in a few.” He hung up before his brother had a chance to fret any further.
“Jesus, what did he do, hit her with a brick?” Detective Timothy Wyatt stared down at the remains of what—judging by the rest of her—had once been a young blonde woman. He tried to get a sense of her features, but it was near impossible due to the massive bruising that mottled her face. Tim glanced up through the barren branches at the misting sky, breaking away from the sight long enough to distance himself from it a little. All around him, the park was ripe with the scent of decaying greenery as autumn’s fallen foliage decomposed. He let it fill his lungs before looking down again.
Nathaniel McDermott, the medical examiner, shook his head. “I’m going to tentatively call it a two-by-four. There’s a broad bruise across her back, and in the abrasions are splinters of what I’m fairly certain is processed lumber, since I’m not finding any bits of bark along with them.”
There was no evidence of any sort of weapon in the vicinity. “And the killer kept it?”
Tim’s partner, Detective Angela Payne, ducked under the crime-scene tape and came to a stop by his side. “Could have just been whatever was lying around. Or it could have been planned out. It’s an easy weapon to dispose of.” She looked down at the body. “All you need is a fireplace.”
“What would a two-by-four be doing in the middle of a million trees?” He rubbed his chin for a moment, frowning. “That bruise across her shoulders . . . Are we thinking he—or she—got the drop on her? She comes around the corner, he hits her from b
ehind, knocks her down, and goes to town?”
McDermott nodded. “It’s possible. There’s blood spatter on the ground and tree trunks. The attack took place right in this spot. We’re going to have a hard time getting footprints with all the leaves on the ground, though. If this drizzle had fallen twenty-four hours ago, we’d have an easier time of it.”
“I’ll be sure to register a complaint, see if we can do something about that.” Tim gave McDermott a wry smile.
“What would someone wearing those boots be doing in Forest Park?” Payne frowned, her eyes moving up and down the corpse. “Take it from me, Wyatt, you don’t wear spike heels where it’s not paved. They punch into the sod, and then you break your fuckin’ ankle.”
“What would someone dressed like her be doing in Forest Park to begin with?” Tim eyeballed the tight, shiny brown leather pants wrapped around the young woman’s legs. Tatters and shreds of dried leaves stuck to her clothing where blood and rain had wetted it, as they did to her bruised face. “Was she out at a club? Sex worker? What call girl meets a john on a hiking trail?”
Payne shrugged. “Maybe she was just on a date and the guy brought her here? Though, if you ask me, those aren’t date clothes, either. They’re not easy-access enough for her to be a stripper, and they’d be damned inconvenient if she was turning a trick.” She looked up from the body. “Besides, what are those pockets by her shoulder? Could it be a costume? Maybe she was a model?”
McDermott snorted, tucking away his measuring tape. “Not likely. She’s only five foot four.”
“Not like a fashion model. A personal one,” Payne clarified. “Some private photographer wanted to do a fetish-wear shoot, maybe? That would explain the outfit and location.”
A uniform came jogging over, forestalling Tim’s reply.
“We found her bag,” he panted. “It’s over in the trees back that way. Documenting the scene now.”
Tim glanced at his partner and followed the rookie over the uneven ground to another cordoned-off area where a backpack lay at the base of a shallow gully.
“We just finished photographing the area,” a tech informed him. “We think it was thrown down from that jogging path up there.”
“How many sets of footprints are we going to find on a popular jogging path?” Payne grumbled.
The tech grimaced. “Too many. I’ll let you know what we find.”
“No wonder it took so long to find the bag.” Tim pulled on a pair of gloves, squatting down beside the pack. “We thought we were looking for a purse or a handbag, something to match the clothes.”
Payne drew closer as he unzipped it. “No change of clothing, so if she was doing a photo shoot— Wait. A parking pass for the Portland Convention Center?” She hummed thoughtfully. “That could be our answer. Maybe she was a booth babe. A lot of strippers moonlight doing that sort of thing.”
“Wouldn’t it be sunlight?” Tim shrank away from the flat look Payne gave him. “Anyway, I thought they only had those at conventions in Las Vegas. But we’ll check the venue, find out what events were going on there over the weekend.” He rifled carefully through the printouts and notebooks stuffed into the pack. “She was a student. This is all schoolwork. Media trends. Feminist theory. Looks like notes for a paper. Any ID?”
“Here it is.” Payne located a wallet in one of the outer pouches and pulled out a student ID. “Charity Anspach, enrolled at PSU. Assuming this is her bag. We’ll have to make sure the ID matches the body.”
“Which could take a while, considering the condition of her face, especially if she hasn’t been fingerprinted before.”
She sighed. “Fuck. And then we get to tell her parents they’re not going to see her graduate. Come on. Let’s see if there’s an ex and work our way through it.”
Jordan’s phone had already been vibrating with texts, warning him, before he arrived to see that there were people with signs picketing on the sidewalk outside the Third Wave Studios offices. Signs which read, “Protect our Children!” and “End the Violence.” There were even a couple about stopping the homosexual agenda. That was new, at least as far as the real-life picketers went. It wasn’t the first time antigaming crusaders had taken aim at Third Wave for their content, and those groups had been on a rampage since the Sandy Hook shooting, courtesy of the NRA attempting to divert blame to the gaming industry. The Phoenix Force franchise was no more graphically violent than any other first-person shooter game, nor was the sexual content any more explicit than any other RPG. It was considerably milder than many titles in the genre, in fact, and none of the violence was sexualized, which couldn’t be said for many other games.
But logic had little to do with the protesters’ platform.
Great. Just great. Because the harassment Niles was already getting wasn’t enough.
Jordan frowned again as he recalled the texts Niles had received last night. It was harder than he would have thought, seeing what some of the trolls were saying to and about Niles. Now the occasional glum and besieged phases Niles and Rosie went through made a lot more sense. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since, even after he’d left the guy he’d picked up.
He’d lied to Niles about where he’d been all night. After leaving the twink, he’d gone into the office and started looking through the stacks of fan mail, as well as the email from the contact box on the studio website. There was much more where the harassing texts had come from. There were entire fan forums dedicated to malcontents who were unhappy with the gay storylines in Third Wave games. The shit the twerps said on the various forums, showing their internet dicks and talking big to try to impress one another, seeing who could say the vilest thing, was even worse. Jordan had started making accounts on every board and forum and mailing list he could find to keep track of them all, under the rationale that as Third Wave’s marketing director, he should know what the fans were saying, even the negative stuff. They kept egging each other on, prompting ever more extravagant threats and insults, and the big brother in him—admittedly only by six minutes, but still—wanted to start bashing heads together.
Sighing, he drove past the protesters, then hung his laptop case on his shoulder, and headed inside to where Niles and Rosie were talking in the door of the break room, cradling cups of coffee and looking far more tense than the picketers accounted for.
“So what’s their beef today?” Jordan asked, striding toward his office as they fell in step with him.
“They found a new angle,” Rosie nearly growled. “That video went up on YouTube just like I predicted it would, and now Niles is the poster boy for fags everywhere trying to push the gay agenda on unsuspecting kids.”
Jordan set his bag down a little harder than necessary in his chair. “Wait. They got that from you informing them that Niles wasn’t on the writing staff for Age of Valiance?”
“He’s our lead writer, even if he’s not working on a specific title. Or that’s the argument they’re using.”
Niles grabbed a remote off the filing cabinet and turned on the TV on the wall in the corner of Jordan’s office. “They’ve called the news outlets. There are going to be interviews.”
“Shit.” Jordan closed his eyes, imagining declining sales after the news broadcast claimed that Third Wave was shoving gay storylines on people’s kids. This was going to take some spin control. “We need to get ahead of this. Start a marketing campaign immediately touting the message of acceptance and diversity inherent in Third Wave’s games. Get it out to liberal parenting sites, not just LGBT and ally sites. We need to hammer home the message that equality is the ultimate family value. I’m going to draft a post for our social forums to be released immediately and start scheduling interviews.”
“Get on it, then,” Rosie said shortly. “In the meantime, we’ve got another problem.”
“It’s not a problem.” Niles spoke between gritted teeth.
“The fuck it isn’t!” She snatched an envelope from his hands and threw it on Jordan’s desk. He
picked it up. It had Niles’s name and address on it and inside was a plain, white sheet of paper with two large, stark words:
WATCH YOURSELF
Jordan blinked at it. “You still going to tell me they’re not threatening you?”
“Don’t make a big deal out of it.” Niles ran a hand through his hair. “We might not get many of these sorts of fan letters by snail mail, but they do come.”
“To your home address?” Rosie folded her arms across her chest, her posture aggressive. Yesterday, she’d been on Niles’s side of this issue, but today she was clearly in Jordan’s camp. “It’s bad enough that they’ve got your personal cell phone number.”
Niles rubbed his forehead as if he were getting a headache. “It doesn’t matter. It’s still just a bunch of punks talking big.”
She narrowed her eyes. “If they’ve tracked down your physical address, we have to assume it’s more than talk.”
“Oh, come on! Finding someone’s physical address is a search away these days. I don’t remember you reacting this way when the Google Earth images of your house went online.”
Rosie went very still. “You’re right. I didn’t react. I just sold the house I loved and moved into a cookie-cutter high-rise condo building downtown with a doorman and a security system.” The ragged edge to her voice cut through the heated debate, and Niles fell silent. “I let them make me afraid. I let them drive me out of my house, Niles, and if you didn’t see me react to that, you weren’t paying attention.”
“Rosie—” Niles reached out to her, but she was still closed off, pulled into herself. Making an admission like that had to have cost her.
A detail caught Jordan’s eye, and he felt himself go cold. “Jesus! Niles, there’s no stamp on the fucking envelope.”
“So?”
“You didn’t notice?” Jordan slid it across the desk back at him, and Niles stared at it, blinking. “Whoever sent this hand delivered it.”
“Oh Christ.” Rosie covered her mouth with her hand. “Niles, they were at your house.”
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