by Andrea Speed, A. B. Gayle, Jessie Blackwood, J. J Levesque, Katisha Moreish
That last nearly made Gil choke on his beer. He mastered the urge and gazed into Miles’ eyes. “Damn, I forgot to tell you, I’m vegetarian...and a closet rap artist!” He grinned. “How about if I want a midnight feast? Do I have to wake you up for permission?”
Miles marvelled at the way Gil had managed to keep a perfectly straight face when he answered. He’d already seen him consume meat on several occasions. He sniggered. “Nah. I wouldn’t want to cramp your style. Just give me warning if you’ve got guests. I’d hate to blunder in while you’re in the middle of consuming some chocolate and cream-covered delights in the kitchen.”
“I’ll make sure I enjoy my cream-covered delights in bed then...” Gil couldn’t resist.
“As long as you’re washing the sheets, that’s fine. Do you want me to buy in extra cans of dairy whip?”
“No, a little goes a long way.” How the hell had the conversation got this naughty? Gil liked the exchange though; Miles wasn’t as stiff—fuck, no, don’t think about that now—as he usually seemed.
The makings of a salad didn’t take long to prepare. In a way Miles was just happy for the chance to chat. Roofie may be intelligent, but he still wasn’t much of a dinner companion.
In the spirit of their new found camaraderie Gil reached across the counter for the cutlery drawer, intent on helping set out the tools. Miles glared at him.
“Leave it!” Miles slapped Gil’s hand away and regretted the action immediately.
“Bloody hell, Miles, what was that for?” Gil massaged his stung flesh. “I was only trying to help...”
“I told you. I don’t need any help.” Shit, things had been going so good, too.
“Geez, are you this bossy in bed as well?” Gil raised an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth twitched in a suggestive smile.
Miles swallowed. He so didn’t want to go there. “I....” The sound of Freddy Mercury’s distinctive voice cut across what he was about to say. What was the song? “Save Me”? How appropriate.
Gil scrabbled for his phone and checked the caller display, then flipped it open. “Mum? Hang on a sec.” Gil turned to Miles. “Won’t be a mo.” He wandered off out of earshot.
Miles finished off the salad and setting the table. The steaks were ready. Maybe instead of sounding like a bad-tempered Top, he should have checked to see how Gil liked his cooked. Most of the Brits he’d met liked them overdone. But somehow he couldn’t imagine Gil being like that. If he was offended by the sight of blood he was in the wrong business. Medium rare was more like him. At least he didn’t have to worry that the quality of the meat. One advantage of not living in a country where you were lucky to have meat at all let alone good quality stuff. He turned off the grill and placed the steaks on the plate. Hopefully Gil’s mother wasn’t a gas bag.
Gil flipped the phone shut. That was a turn up. It also put a different colour on things. He saw Miles had finished setting the table and the food was done. Taking a seat he faced the doctor and said “We have to take this to the cops, Miles.”
“What? Our dinner? I thought they preferred donuts.” Miles rounded up the dogs and pushed them out the door before they started whining to be fed again. No way was he going to have Roofie gaining weight, too.
“That was mum with the information I wanted. She didn’t sound too happy either. She didn’t buy my excuse about the pub quiz, warned me not to get into anything dangerous.”
Miles racked his brain, trying to work out what the hell Gil was referring to. “Sorry, mate. You’ve lost me.”
“Stan’s journal? Henry Vale, or whatever his name is? Maybe Vladimir something, if Stan didn’t get his knickers in a twist over nothing. Bratva, that word that I knew wasn’t Latin? It isn’t. It means ‘brotherhood’ in Russian.”
“What, like the Russian mafia or something?”
“No ‘or something’ about it. Apparently it’s how they refer to themselves. If Stan got that right, we could be in deep shit. Not to mention...fuck...sorry, I have to call Lyle...” Gil flipped his phone open again, fingers flying over the keys.
“Wait. I’ve already been to the cops. Flynn’s gone awol, now. Can’t find him or Aiden. I called around to the cop shop, but they’re not interested. Claim to be under-staffed or something. Anyway, Flynn specifically said he didn’t want them involved. I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t trust them or that he doesn’t want to appear on their radar.” Miles waved his hand at the dinner. “Eat your dinner. Steak tastes crap, if it’s cold.”
Gil sat listening to the phone ringing, willing Lyle to pick up. Nothing happened and his voicemail kicked in. Gil left a quick and urgent message, simple and to the point. “Call me, asap,” and closed the phone. “No luck. I’ll have to try again later. I sure as hell hope nothing has happened to him, too.” He began to eat, pragmatic enough to know when to use an opportunity to its best advantage. In his line of work, you took your chances when you could. Interruptions were all too common. “You’ve done the steaks medium?” Gil was, for some reason, surprised.
Miles paused with a forkful just in front of his mouth. Shit. He should have checked first. “You have a problem with that?”
“Hell no, I like them done like this.” Gil watched the pink middle of the steak ooze blood as his knife cut through. Blood. Well, that was something he had no problems with, as long as it didn’t belong to anyone he knew.
The meal had lost its flavour as far as Miles was concerned. In a way, Flynn’s warnings about Vale being dangerous had seemed overly-dramatic, despite Stan’s disappearance and the hands turning up. Now he’d just sent Gil’s new boyfriend on a hunt which could place him in danger too. “I hope Lyle is okay. In the morning, I’m going to take the dogs for a walk past Aiden’s and Flynn’s places, maybe check out the funeral home. If they’re not around, I’m calling Asher Bay police. Bugger the locals.”
“If Stan was right, then it’s a good bet he’s already dead.”
Miles glanced up at Gil. Did he really understand what was going on here? The dangerous mission to check the urns he’d possibly sent Lyle on? “Who’s dead? Stan? Flynn? Aiden? Lyle? The Mafia aren’t exactly worried about body counts.”
Gil sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He was totally out of his depth with all of this. Yet, so far as he knew, nothing had happened. There was no guarantee that Flynn was right and that Stan was anything other than a mentally unstable flake with a grudge. He had no proof of any wrong-doing to take to the police, nothing apart from his own suspicions. Just a word in a journal that didn’t make sense. “Okay, okay, let’s see what happens.” Gil checked his watch. “Lyle should be home by now. If I don’t get an answer, I’ll go round.” His phone rang just as he was about to add that if he didn’t get an answer, he would at least report Lyle as missing. Checking the display he sighed in relief and flipped it open. “Lyle? Are you okay?”
“Hi, Gil, yeah. Why shouldn’t I be?”
Gil opened his mouth to say something then thought better of it. “How did it go at work?”
“Well, I did as Miles asked. Nothing odd, though, that I could find.”
Gil glanced across at Miles and said “So, that’s a dead end then?” Wanting to warn Lyle was warring with being careful with what he said aloud.
“Funny man. Yeah, it was a dead end. Very dead.” Lyle forced himself to chuckle at the pun.
“Okay, I’ll tell Miles. Stay safe then, okay? You need anything, call me?”
“Thanks, Gil...See you tomorrow, yeah?”
“Okay, call me, we’ll go for lunch?” Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong. Lyle was either a damn good liar or there really was no cause for worry. Once Lyle had rung off Gil turned to find Miles who was watching him curiously. “He said he didn’t find anything.”
Haven Falls #197 Rattled
Lyle Ashley Tate
(with mentions of Flynn Archer, Carter Gillespie, Miles Sutherland and Henry Vale)
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Vale had shaken him, but the tea and biscuits Lyle had brought with him into his panic room were helping. He sat where he could watch the feeds from the various cameras round the house, both internal and external.
He was furious. Vale had really rattled his cage. He could deal with the death threats, it was the undermining of his machismo that had hurt. Having to stand on his desire to kill the fucker hadn’t helped either. Seeing the scalpel had confirmed he’d made the right choices, though. Henry Vale was not entirely sane and the scalpel had fresh blood on it; he figured it wasn’t Vale’s own blood on the blade or under his fingernails. Someone was in serious trouble. Or recently dead. Flynn Archer maybe?
How had Vale known he’d been in the basement? Did he have concealed cameras in the room? In all the rooms? Where had Vale appeared from? He’d been sure he was alone when he went down to the basement and he hadn’t heard anyone enter the funeral home after him.
Everything Lyle now knew about Vale would be considered hearsay. He had no evidence at all, even though the arrogant swine had been so full of glee recounting the extent of his operation whilst threatening him with exposure. Vale’s people couldn’t be ‘Old World’ mob, though. He’d already be dead if that were the case.
Lyle tried to stop the movie that was running in his head, the look of shock his husband’s face had worn as his brains were blown out all over the court steps. With the visual memory had come other sensory input too, a recollection of how it had felt to have part of Richard’s skull fly into his cheek, creating a gash, and the sickly sweet scent of his husband’s blood as it had sprayed, hot and metallic, across his mouth and chin. Lyle chewed his cheek to distract himself from the reminiscence.
Vale had been very dismissive of the Italian mafia. What then? The bruiser who shadowed him all the way from work to his home...he was called Dmitri, wasn’t he? Yes, Russian mob maybe? That would add up.
Would collecting the kudos from handing him over to the Italians be too much of a temptation for Vale, regardless of their earlier discussions? The bastard certainly couldn’t be trusted to hold to their arrangement for long, if at all.
He continued to ponder his situation whilst maintaining his vigil with the cameras. Dmitri appeared to have gone, but Lyle didn’t dismiss the idea that he had simply found a camera blind spot to place himself in. How many similar creatures Vale had on his payroll was unknown. Lyle figured it wouldn’t be long, anyway, until the mortician got bored and decided to save on Dmitri’s overtime by dusting him.
This was a real, very bloody, mess he was in now. He couldn’t be sure that Agent Tyler wasn’t compromised. That Tyler might have proven incompetent enough to let him take work with a mob-connected made man seemed too far-fetched to believe; the alternative was that he had been set up. The local cops were almost certainly bought and paid for too. He had no family and no friends in Haven Falls besides Carter Gillespie. The paramedic had called him earlier, but while he was still under Vale’s surveillance he hadn’t dared take the call.
Gil and Miles were expecting him to feed back on what he had discovered. The irony was, his investigation in the basement, which had gotten him into so much hot water with Vale, had drawn a blank; there was nothing to indicate there was anything at all dodgy about the urns stored there. He again shuddered to think what he might have found if he had actually looked in the freezer down there, though.
Lyle made the decision to call Gil. He would have to watch his tone, though. Gil was sharp and would pick up on anything out of character when they talked. He needed his buddy to stay away from Vale, to stay safe, but he wouldn’t be able to say anything too obvious. It was actually looking like Gil’s 007 idea was less far-fetched than he’s imagined, but that would tell Gil he was running, and he had no way, nor any intention, of running this time.
Lyle Ashley Tate had resolved to make himself a life and a home in Haven Falls. He was keeping both. Vale’s innate psychotic cruelty had made him an enemy, and a vengeful one at that; Lyle hadn’t been able to draw any Mafia blood for Richard’s sake, but he figured it was now open season on Vale, all he had to do was come up with a plan that wouldn’t land him on death row.
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The conversation with Gil had been, of necessity, brief and colorless. When it was done with Lyle decided to check his emails. He was distressed, but unsurprised, to see that Vale had managed to invade his inbox. Of course the messages left were all anonymous, full of veiled threats and ominous warnings of what could be made to happen if he didn’t stay nicely co-operative and submissive. He set about collecting proof of where the email had come from, for use later.
Whilst he worked, Lyle considered his options. He could call Agent Tyler. Normally that would be his automatic response if he felt threatened or feared he had been exposed. He really wanted to call Tyler, to tear her a new orifice. She should have run a background check on Vale; he doubted the man would come up completely clean, even if he had dismembered and roasted anyone who had cottoned on to his arrangements with the Russian mob. Was Tyler compromised, though? Surely a Fed wouldn’t be within Vale’s buying power? Then, if he was telling anything like the truth, Vale had mob connections and organised crime groups had very deep pockets. It had been the shortening of those pockets that had gotten Lyle into witness protection in the first place, and cost him his husband’s life.
He reached up and dragged his aged, precious biscuit tin off the shelf. This was where he kept the tiny fragments he had managed to retain from his past lives—bits the Agency would go mad about if they knew of their existence, but which kept him sane—and his emergency info. He checked the numbers and words scrawled in code on the inside of the box and then picked up the phone. If he couldn’t trust Tyler he had to hope to hell that he could trust her handler—he checked the name before dialling—Senior Agent Adam Breslaw had better be on the ball if Lyle’s idea for dealing with Henry Vale was going to work.
Haven Falls #198 - Happy Endings, Part 1
Flynn Archer, Aiden Parker, & Henry Vale
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After he had given up on breaking into Vale’s computer (it was password protected, and he wasn’t much of a hacker), and got tired of tearing up his house to find evidence, Flynn decided there was only one place left he could go.
Vale hadn’t come home. Flynn couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t come home, except maybe something had happened to him, or maybe he wanted to be closer to wherever he was keeping Aiden. The second was the most likely, so he had nowhere else to go except the funeral home. Not that Vale would be holding Aiden at the funeral home, that was silly. Where would he keep him? It was a more or less public place.
Supposedly. But maybe he was overlooking something. What did he have to lose now?
So Flynn left Vale’s house, wondering if he should set it on fire before leaving. Ultimately he decided he didn’t have time. But he’d keep it in mind for later.
****
Aiden lay on his back staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t know where one ache stopped and the next one started. He was still cuffed to the damn table, and it hurt his back, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. The aches were his own damn fault, too. What the hell was I thinking, throwing that jar at him? he thought, licking his cut lip. It stung, but that pain was dull compared to the rest.
It had to be Monday by now. Maybe even Tuesday. Someone had to know he was missing from school. Angel and Evan would know something was wrong - he never missed a day. Where was Flynn? Was Dante okay? Thoughts raced through his mind as time dragged on. He couldn’t hear a thing and the silence was starting to drive him mad.
****
Flynn had waited until he was sure Lyle the prick was gone, and skulked around the outside, trying to see if there was a back door or some kind of entrance not so well used as the front. Eventually he found a kind of service door around the very back, locked from the inside, but he was able to pick it open, althoug
h it took longer than he would have liked. He didn’t think Vale was here, but if he was, he was being quiet and avoiding windows.
Inside it was quiet, still, and smelled vaguely of dust and formaldehyde. Funeral homes were always vaguely creepy, but in that boring sort of way. He could imagine being locked in here overnight, and dying of boredom shortly before dawn. You wanted it to be more than it was, but perhaps that was his problem alone.
He crept around the funeral home, feeling like a bit of an idiot, but he eventually found a door at the end of a narrow access corridor in the back. It said “Employees Only” on it, so maybe that was something. If it was an autopsy room, he wondered if he’d be sorry or just grossed out.
The door opened on a small staircase the led into a dark basement. Did funeral homes have basements? He had no idea. It was quiet - the whole damn place was quiet as a tomb - so he crept down, tensed, ready to hit something.
But once again he was disappointed. While it wasn’t a laundry room, it seemed to be that in spirit, with coffee cans and urns on little shelves, some instruments that were probably broken or spares, stowed away from the public view.
There was something weird about the basement, though. For one thing, it was designed weird. The back wall seemed almost flush against the back of the stairs, which was a design element he’d never heard of. It reduced the basement to this small, rectangular space. Not only that, but was that a bag of quicklime in the corner? Since when did funeral homes have quicklime?
Flynn felt the weird wall, and knocked on it, instantly regretting it. Not wood - poured concrete. It was cold, and he slid his hand along its surface, feeling for ... well, he had no idea what. A door knob, a button, and invisible key. Something.