On Duty

by A. R. Barley

  No sense in waiting. He could pick it up when he dropped off the groceries.

  He grabbed a scarf off the hook by the door.

  The lightweight knit had been a gift from one of his aunts. He wrapped the deep blue wool twice around his neck and headed for the door. He was halfway there when the knocking started.

  Thump. Thump. A large fist slammed against the door.

  Had Troy forgotten his keys? Or, had things really gotten that bad? He tried to remember what he’d said that morning. What the hell had he been thinking? Asking Troy to choose between him and Ian? His relationship with the detective might be complicated—and all kinds of stupid—but it was also longstanding. They had a shared history that Alex would never be able to match.

  And he didn’t want to.

  He didn’t want to be Troy’s past. Not when there was still so much future they could build together.

  His cousin had been right. Ultimatums were for assholes.

  His hand turned the knob. The door opened.

  “Damn, you had me scared for a minute.”

  “You’re kidding.” Hoyt grinned. “Why?”

  “No reason,” Alex said. “Can I help you?”

  “Troy borrowed my cell phone charger the other day. I was hoping I could get it back?”

  “Come on in.” An electronic chirp signaled Alex’s phone turning on. He grinned. He could call Troy and apologize. They’d make up. The groceries could wait. They could go see Sammy together.

  The phone dinged. He couldn’t remember whether that meant he had a text message or a voicemail.

  It dinged again.

  And again.

  And again.

  It kept dinging while he turned around and walked over to where it was plugged in. So many message alerts sounded it danced across the counter and tugged at the cord. Had Troy called that many times? He picked it up.

  It wasn’t Troy.

  There were close to thirty voicemail messages and none of them were from Troy. Fuck. He started to prioritize. His sisters definitely came first. Then his cousin. Then Connie. An unfamiliar number was mixed in among the others. That was last.

  He groaned. “This is going to be a pain in the ass.”

  There was a laugh from behind him. “Damn straight.”

  The world went dark.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Troy’s feet pounded against the hospital’s chipped linoleum floor. The sour taste of illness and disinfectant tore at his throat, but he refused to slow down. He skidded around the corner and burst up a flight of stairs. His legs stretched out a little further and—

  “You keep moving like that and you’re going to end up back in this place,” Ian warned. “You ever think about slowing down to ask for directions?”

  “Not a chance.” Troy hadn’t exactly invited Ian along for this jaunt, but that hadn’t stopped the detective or Luke from tagging along. Hell, Luke had offered to call in reinforcements in the form of Hoyt and the captain.

  “I know where I’m going.” He took one turn, then another through the crowded maze of narrow corridors and cramped hospital rooms.

  Two pairs of feet sounded behind him, Ian and Luke both matching him step for step. Luke’s breathing was even. They both ran upstairs carrying forty-five pounds of gear on a regular basis. Ian was wheezing hard.

  “You’re out of shape,” Troy said.

  “Go to hell,” Ian snarled.

  Another flight of stairs and he powered his way into an empty room. Shit. He was too late. The bedcovers were still rumpled, but the little closet up against the wall was bare. Sammy’s belongings were gone. He’d been discharged and no one had been there to stand up for him. The woman from Children’s Services had taken him to the group home.

  Troy reached for his cell phone. He needed to call someone—anyone. Children’s Services. Alex’s cousin. Luke’s father. If anything happened to Sammy, Alex would never forgive him.

  Hell, he’d never forgive himself.

  “Troy?” a small voice asked.

  Thank fuck. Troy’s body yanked around. “Sammy.”

  Thin arms wrapped around his middle and a hundred pounds of sobbing teenager sent him stumbling back. Damn. His arm hurt. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming as he tried to adjust Sammy away from his broken arm.

  “Hey, buddy.” He patted the kid’s back awkwardly. “Don’t worry. You’re not alone.”

  “I called Alex.” Sammy’s voice shook. “I called, and I called. He didn’t answer.” There was a sniff. “I got through to Connie. She’s coming. She’s bringing her mother. Maybe some of her aunts.”

  “Good.” Troy nodded. “You remember Luke and Ian? We’re going to take care of everything.”

  “Mr. Barnes.” The social worker’s voice had a sting to it. “What are you doing here?”

  Ms. Tanya Lee was five feet of gristle and teeth. Her black hair was shaped like a battle helmet. She wore an eggshell cardigan over a pink and white dress. A stack of brightly colored folders peeked out from the top of her mint-green bag.

  “Sammy called us.” Troy cleared his throat. “Ms. Lee, these are my friends Detective Ian Sinclair of the NYPD and Luke Parsons. We’re here to make sure Sammy gets to the right place.”

  Ms. Lee’s upper lip curled back. “I know what I’m doing, Mr. Barnes. Samantha—”

  “Sammy,” Luke corrected firmly.

  “According to my paperwork she’s Samantha.” Ms. Lee dropped her bag on the counter at the nurses’ station, rifling through it until she found a lime-green folder with a coffee stain in the top left corner. “In case you weren’t aware, there’s a problem here in New York City. Too many children who need homes. Not enough places for them to go.”

  “Sammy has a place to go.”

  “That’s great, but unless I have the paperwork, there’s nothing I can do. Samantha has to go to an approved location. The group home is an approved facility.” At least she had the decency to look ashamed. “It’s not the best in the city, but it’s not the worst either. Not by a long shot.”

  “It’s a girl’s home,” Sammy objected. “I’m a boy.”

  “It’s safe,” Ms. Lee snapped. “We wouldn’t be going through this if you were more cooperative, Samantha. Let me contact your parents and you can go home.”

  A nurse came by and shoved the social worker’s bag to the back of the counter. All around them people were racing back and forth. Medical staff. Families. Patients. Machines beeped and an elevator dinged.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Troy put a hand out to steady himself against a sage-green wall. He couldn’t do this by himself. Where the hell was Alex? “Sorry, Ms. Lee.” He tried to paste a charming smile onto his face. He could feel his lips curving up, but from the social worker’s reaction it was more intimidating than anything else. Then again, facing a man over a foot taller than her could be intimidating. He let the expression drop. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you ever run away from home when you were a kid?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I did. More times than I can count. I never made it past the town line, not until I was eighteen.” Sometimes late at night, asleep in his bed, he still dreamed about the view through the dirt-streaked window as the bus accelerated down the old county road. He’d watched until the brick bungalows and old farmhouses that dominated his childhood finally disappeared in the distance like so many specks of dust.

  “I should have left sooner. Things might have ended up different.”

  He’d earned the occasional swat on the ass, but his parents hadn’t been physically abusive. Instead, they’d forced him to hide who he was from their bigoted beliefs and unrealistic expectations. They’d thought that people like him were worthless and he’d believed it, so far down in his sou
l he hadn’t even realized what was happening until it was too late.

  “They told me I was trash, and I believed them. Afterward I did things—I stayed in bad relationships—because I didn’t think I deserved any better.”

  He wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to Sammy. Not if he could help it.

  “Please.” The rough wall scraped against his hand as he stood up straight. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

  The woman almost looked convinced. For a moment. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Barnes, but my paperwork says—”

  “We’re not asking you to break the rules,” Luke interrupted. “We’re asking for a little bit of time so we can figure something out.” He held his palm out in a calming gesture. “Sometimes paperwork gets misplaced. You spill your coffee and it gets hard to read.”

  Ms. Lee’s head tilted to the side. She blinked. “Luke Parsons, any relationship to Henry?”

  “My father.”

  “He liked to bend the rules too, but his heart was in the right place.” She snapped the folder shut and retrieved her bag from the nurses’ station. “I don’t misplace my paperwork, and I don’t spill. I’m going to get a cup of coffee—maybe have a smoke. If I get distracted, it’ll take me an hour or two to get back up here. Then we’re going.”

  She turned and left.

  Troy didn’t even breathe as he watched her go. Sammy didn’t either. Ian was breathing hard enough for the both of them, and Luke was too busy flirting with a nurse in ducky scrubs to notice.

  He frowned. “You really couldn’t get in touch with Alex?”

  “He never answered his phone,” Sammy said, his voice watery. “Do you think he’s avoiding me?”

  “Not a chance.” Alex might be pissed off at Troy, but he wouldn’t take it out on Sammy. “I know he was looking forward to seeing you. He probably got called in to work.” He used his good hand to dig into his pocket and check his phone. No messages. No missed calls. Where the hell was he? “Maybe he turned his phone off.”

  With the social worker no longer on the floor, Sammy allowed a little space between the two of them. “Did something happen between the two of you?”

  “We had a disagreement.” Troy shoved his fingers through his hair. Time to change the subject. They needed to talk about something else—anything else. “Ian arrested the guy who started the warehouse fire. It was the warehouse manager. Antoine Tully.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Sammy sniffed. “What about his partner?”

  “His partner?” Ian straightened up a little. He shook his head like a dog trying to get water out of his ear. “Antoine was a nut. The first fire at the warehouse was an accident. He started the other ones because he lost his job.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The first fire wasn’t an accident.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If it was Antoine, then it wasn’t an accident. They were using the place to transport counterfeit whiskey. High-end stuff. Antoine said too many people had seen it. He wanted to shut things down and restart somewhere else, but his partner said they needed to get rid of the evidence. I thought they were going to throw everything out, but he must have meant the fire.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” That came from Luke. He’d abandoned the nurse to listen in on their conversation. “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  Sammy’s eyes were wide. His skin was pale. For a moment it looked like he was going to bolt. Then he swallowed down his nervous energy. “Nobody asked about the manager.” He glared at Ian, a prickly porcupine with fluffy blond hair. “You didn’t ask. You wanted to know if I’d seen someone set the fire. The guys in the funky uniforms just wanted to turn me over to Children’s Services.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t know it had anything to do with the whiskey. I would have told you if I did. I mean, all those other places caught fire too. There wasn’t any whiskey at them, right?”

  “Not that we could find,” Troy said.

  Ian’s face was pale. “Shit. The lieutenant’s going to have my ass. The lawyers are going to pitch a fit. Can you identify Tully’s partner? The one who said they needed to get rid of the evidence.”

  Sammy looked so damn small in his secondhand clothes, his fingers twisted in the hem of his shirt, his chin flat against his chest. “I didn’t get a good look at him. They always brought the boxes in at night.” There was a long pause. He lifted his head. His eyes gleamed. “He had a funny name though.”

  “Funny name?”

  “Yeah, like something out of a novel.” Sammy looked sheepish. “Hyde? No... Hoyt.”

  “Hoyt.” Troy felt numb. “Are you sure it was Hoyt?”

  Ian’s gaze narrowed. “He’s on your crew, right?”

  “It’s not the same guy.” Luke shook his head. “There are a lot of Hoyts in New York City.”

  And Sammy wasn’t even sure about the name. It didn’t have to mean anything. The warehouse manager’s partner couldn’t be a damn firefighter. No way.

  Except, Hoyt always had money for an extra round of drinks or a friendly wager on the football game. He wore the same uniform as most of the other guys at the engine house—blue jeans and T-shirts—but his jeans were designer and he had a collection of different tennis shoes to match his shirts.

  It wasn’t the money either.

  The engine house always threw an end-of-summer party. The last three years running Hoyt had brought whiskey. Good stuff. Troy tried to remember the last big event he’d shown up at without a bottle in hand and failed.

  He sagged in the middle of the hallway. “It’s him.”

  Luke’s mouth was half open as he started his denials—

  He was interrupted by the jangle of Troy’s cell phone. He slid it out of his back pocket and looked at the screen. Alex. He hit the talk button.

  “Thank God,” he said. “You need to keep your phone on. There are a bunch of people worried about you.”

  “Your boyfriend’s a little indisposed at the moment, but I’ll be sure to pass on the message.”

  “Hello, Hoyt.” He held up a hand, signaling for silence from Ian and Luke. “I was just talking about you.”

  “Saying something good I hope.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I was passing through the neighborhood; thought I’d see what all the fuss was about.” There was a soft laugh on the other end of the line. “You really lucked into this place.”

  From their tone of voice, it could have been any one of a hundred conversations they’d had over the years. They could have been talking about the damn weather.

  They weren’t.

  Not when Troy’s heart had stopped beating altogether when he’d heard his onetime friend’s voice on the other end of the line.

  Luke and Sammy were staring at him like he’d lost his mind. Ian looked pissed.

  “Alex.” He swallowed hard. “Can I speak to Alex?”

  “Sorry. Like I said, he’s unavailable.”

  “Is he going to be available when I get home?”

  There was a long pause. “Depends how fast you get here.”

  “You touch him and I’ll kick your ass.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” Hoyt said. Then he hung up.

  Son-of-a-bitch. His cell phone falling out of his hands, Troy stumbled forward until he hit something hard. His lungs were screaming for air, every gasp audible. He straightened his spine. “What’s the fastest way downtown?”

  “This time of day?” Ian shrugged. “No such thing.”

  “My boyfriend’s been kidnapped by an idiot with a history of blowing shit up.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Ian elbowed Luke in the side. “Call the station. Talk to my captain. Have him send o
ver a uniform to take you to the station.”

  “I know the drill,” Luke said.

  “Good. Tell him you’ve got a material witness in an arson investigation, then have the kid tell him everything he told us.”

  Troy didn’t wait to hear if Luke or Sammy had anything to say back. He was too busy racing for the exit.

  One single thought repeated itself over and over again in his mind.

  Alex was in trouble. He needed help, and if he tossed Troy out on his ass afterward? It wouldn’t be the end. Not while they still had breath in their bodies.

  He had to get there in time.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “What the hell did you hit me with?” Alex rubbed the bump on the back of his head. It was the size of a kiwi and doubling rapidly. Shit. “A rock?”

  He pushed himself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the side of the daybed. He was only ten feet from the apartment door. If he could get to his feet—

  Light from the window struck gleaming metal. The butt of Hoyt’s gun peeked out above the waist of his jeans.

  Alex would be shot before he made it halfway.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and took deep gasping breaths, forcing air down into his lungs. His head was pounding. His skin felt tight. His eyes were hot.

  It took him a full thirty seconds to open his eyes.

  Hoyt’s smile was toothy. Something was wrong with his eyes—cruel, or maybe Alex was reading into things. After all, the man had knocked him out with a single well-timed blow to the head. Who the hell carried a rock around New York City?

  “Not a rock.” Hoyt nodded toward a pile of scraps in the middle of the living room.

  It took Alex a full minute to identify the remains of Troy’s surfer dude lamp. The thing had been oversized, tacky, and—unfortunately for his head—heavy, but it hadn’t been particularly sturdy.

  Damn it.

  “You know how hard it’s going to be to find another one of those?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be an issue.”