by Elle Keaton
Unseeing brown eyes stared through him. Weir was shivering, but not pulling away. Okay, he could work with that. He’d been a bartender since he turned twenty-one. He had seen and dealt with almost every situation.
Kent forced his way through the crowd, finally making it to the bar.
“Help me get him into my office, then get back out here and confiscate every fucking noisemaker you can find. It’s Valentine’s Day, not New Year’s Eve. And send Kevin up here; he can show off his chops for a bit.”
Ignoring patrons waving for drinks, he came around the bar, moving to one side of Weir while Kent took the other. Slipping an arm around Weir’s narrow waist, Sterling whispered into his ear, “Come back to the office for a few minutes, okay?”
He received a slight nod, and when they stood, Weir turned into him, using Sterling’s body as a shield. Between them, he and Kent edged Weir around the end of the bar toward the small office hidden behind it.
The office was Sterling’s not-so-secret hideaway. He figured he spent enough time in it, he might as well make it comfortable. After he’d fashioned a desk out of a wooden plank and a couple of sawhorses and added a fancy, ergonomically correct roller chair he’d spent way too much money on, as well as a small couch with red faux-velvet upholstery and a plush area rug, the little room had become his refuge. Sterling waved Kent back out to the front.
Weir mumbled something unintelligible. Sterling gently nudged him onto the couch before crouching down in front of him. Taking a deep breath, Weir sagged into the seat, his head lolling against the back cushion. “Well, that was awkward,” he whispered. “I haven’t had one of those in a long time. Sorry about that.”
“What happened? Aside from the jackass blowing a noisemaker in your ear.”
“Slow down a fucking minute. Lemme catch up,” Weir groused.
Sterling figured if the guy was bitchy, he’d survive whatever the little episode had been. Pushing himself to his feet, he stood over Weir, assessing his general bearing.
The guy looked worn out, frayed at the edges. Dark circles had taken up residence under his eyes, and his skin didn’t have the same healthy tone it had the first time they met.
They’d hung out on New Year’s Eve at Buck Swanfeldt’s house, but Sterling had seen him around before that. Probably at Sara Schultz’s place. Weir was good-looking, had the SoCal thing going for him, especially with his outfit tonight. Not the type Sterling usually hooked up with, but good-looking enough. Probably not more than mid-twenties, though tonight he looked older.
“You want some water?” He’d never seen such dark brown eyes with blond hair before. It was… disarming. Weir stared up at him, unguarded for a moment, unaware and exposed. A vein in his neck throbbed. A flicker of some unnamed emotion crossed his face, gone so quickly Sterling couldn’t catalog it.
“Yeah, I’ll have some water.”
Sterling handed over a bottle from the stash under his desk. He was going to assume the “thanks” was silent. Weir took a drink, and the weird silence grew longer, more taut between them. Weir’s knees bumped against Sterling’s shins, and yeah, he was still standing between the guy’s splayed legs. For whatever reason, Sterling still didn’t move. They had gone from panic attack to playing an erotic game of chicken. He was taken by surprise by a surge of heat, low in his groin.
“I don’t think I’m in any state to return the favor, but I’ve heard an orgasm goes a long way toward bringing someone down from a panic attack. Endorphins and shit like that.” Weir waved a languid hand toward his groin.
“That so?”
“Yeah.” He grinned, revealing something else Sterling had never seen before. At Buck’s Weir had been reserved and quiet. The grin changed him; Sterling had a glimpse of a goofy, boyish demeanor Weir hid behind a professional mask. Weir was handsome any day of the week, but the grin elevated him to fucking gorgeous.
It was madness. Pure madness. Faint sounds from the bar penetrated the office. Good-natured yelling, and then somebody bumped up the volume on the sound system and the pounding lyrics of the Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know” drifted into the small room. He did, kinda, want to know. Fuck. He hadn’t been drinking, couldn’t blame this crazy on alcohol.
Weir watched him while he stood there weighing the pros and cons of a blow job. Really, he asked himself, cons? Weir’s expression, still unguarded, sparked with a smoldering heat. They both wanted this.
Sinking to his knees and thanking his own forethought when he hit the area rug, he reached out a surprisingly steady hand to tug open the button of Weir’s cargos. The music thumped louder, egging him on together with the soft, drowsy expression on Weir’s face.
Oh, and he was commando. Jesus fuck. Sterling fished Weir’s semi-erect cock out of hiding, pushing his pants down around his hips as he did so. Weir was cut, long, slender, gorgeous. Sterling leaned closer, pressing his nose into Weir’s groin. There was almost nothing he liked better than the smell of man, a musky tang unique to each guy he had ever blown. He had to reach down and adjust himself, his own hardening dick at an awkward angle in his tight jeans.
“Fuck.” Weir drew out the word, as if it was too much work to enunciate. “It’s been so long, I’m… Yeah.” His hips twitched upward, his cock growing harder in Sterling’s fist. Oh. Yeah.
Sterling hadn’t put his mouth on him yet. He had an excitable boy in his hands. Nice. Inhaling his scent again, enjoying the caress of Weir’s shaft against his cheek, he let his tongue trace a path to the plump mushroom tip where he teased the slit, holding onto the base with one hand, opening his own jeans with the other. It was hard to jack two dicks at once, but Sterling needed a hand on himself, even if it was his own.
He took as much of Weir into his mouth as he could. He loved giving blow jobs, but he had a terrible gag reflex. Tragic story of his life. Weir didn’t do any controlling shit like grab his head or pull his hair, which Sterling appreciated. Opening wide and pushing down as far as he could, he sucked that thing like a Kirby—or was it Hoover? His cheeks hollowed as he sucked and licked, losing himself in the soft sounds Weir was making, the scent of him, the soft skin under his tongue.
Fingers touched his cheek, caressing it. Sterling looked up through his lashes at Weir, his head still against the back of the couch, only the one hand touching Sterling’s face. Weir’s hips jerked. In a moment he was coming into Sterling’s mouth. Tangy, bitter come exploded across his tongue, and he swallowed what he could. Tugging his pulsing shaft, he came with a rush into his own hand.
The room was silent except for their quiet breathing while they pulled themselves back together. Sterling slid down onto his ass, his dick still semi-erect.
“Sorry,” Weir said.
“Sorry? For what?”
“I didn’t ask, you know, before I came. But I’m negative.” He waved vaguely toward his cock, which was still not tucked back into his cargos. The man looked like he would have lost a fight with a limp noodle.
Oh. Sterling waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Ah, and now you know you don’t have to ask.”
After snagging a tissue from his desk to wipe off his hand, Sterling stood up and rearranged himself, tucking his shirt and other important parts back into his jeans.
A sharp rap on the office door intruded on their… whatever this was. “Sterling, Kevin’s drowning out here,” Kent yelled through the door. Fuck.
“Be right there.” He looked at Weir, who was still sitting there, gathering himself. “I gotta go. The back exit is farther down the hall. Be careful in the alley.” Sterling checked himself in the small mirror—no come on his face, hair mostly behaving, smile in place—and left his sanctuary for the madness awaiting him.
Three
Hundreds of hours of research and surveillance later, Weir drifted along in a bleary haze. It had been weeks since Peter Krystad was murdered. There were no solid leads. No smoking gun. No emails to, or from, bitter rivals. No jilted lover or spouse (that Weir could find), no connecti
on to geoducks. And yet, someone had carefully planned his murder and gone to great lengths not to be discovered. The perp had made no mistakes. Yet.
Hunger plagued him, but nothing appealed. Especially not clams, or maybe any kind of seafood. Ever again. His exhaustion was weighty enough for it to be difficult for him to focus on the computer screen on his desk. Tracking these smugglers/killers down was proving to be a lesson in persistence and patience. The Fish and Wildlife contact he was working with, Tom Poole, pestered him relentlessly. Krystad had been his partner and longtime friend. Poole wanted justice.
It was hunger that finally drove Weir to the Booking Room later that morning. Also, he wanted to talk to Sara about Krystad. From the number of empty to-go cups in his office, Krystad had a serious Booking Room habit.
The café was busy, as usual. Weir could see the draw. Even a few local cops were enjoying a coffee break before heading back to fight Skagit’s crime. Those who were left, anyway, after the internal investigation that followed the exposure of Matveev and the shits who had been in his orbit.
The chance of Weir being able to head to the café and not know anyone there was vanishingly slim. He’d been in line for just a few moments when Sara’s dad, Ed, hailed him over to “his” table. Ever since a few months ago when the café had been targeted by teens paid to vandalize the shop, Ed had been there every day. He wasn’t fooling anyone, but Sara was sweet enough to pretend she didn’t know he was trying to protect her and her employees.
The table closest to the espresso machine was unofficially Ed’s. If a new, or unaware, customer made the mistake of sitting there before Ed arrived, he would sit down with them. Sara had given up trying to get him to behave. Unsuspecting customers received a coffee on the house. And Ed? Ed made new friends.
Normally Weir tried to avoid the “codger table,” as Sara called it. He could only handle so much random gossip. Today, however, Ed fit perfectly into his hastily laid plan to see if the Skagit gossip underground knew anything about Krystad. The key would be making it casual. Although he questioned Ed’s capacity for subtlety of any kind.
“Carroll.” Ed smiled at him. Weir was going to murder whoever had told Ed his first name. The old man insisted on using it whenever they met. “Haven’t seen you around. Thought maybe you’d left without sayin’ goodbye.”
Ed was laying it on thick. “Nope, still here.” He’d considered leaving without saying goodbye, but didn’t get out quick enough. Now his bags were unpacked again.
“You look tired.”
“This new case is keeping me busy.”
Ed nodded. “You working on the Krystad case?” This was like taking candy from a baby.
“Yep.” Weir sat down at the table. “Did you know him?”
“Nah, that’s not really the kind of trouble I got into.” Ed chuckled. “I knew him a little, of course. Hard not to; he was here almost every day when he was in town.”
Weir scooted his chair closer, out of the aisle. “Did you ever talk to him? What kind of person was he?” Weir had read the notes, talked to Krystad’s partner and coworkers, but still didn’t have a good feel for who the man had been.
Ed looked thoughtful. “He was nice enough. Sara says he always tipped. He’d order a coffee, sit and work for a while, then order another one to go.” That would explain all the empty cups at his office. “Probably was the cop part of his job, but he wasn’t overly friendly, kept things on the surface.”
“Did he come in here before he was killed? That day, or close to it? Maybe meet someone?” The very definition of grasping for straws, Weir thought.
The noise level had grown. A mom was having some kind of argument with her teenaged son at the front of the line. Whatever they were talking about, it was holding up the line, which now snaked past Ed’s table and out the front door.
“Not that I ever noticed.” Weir refocused on their conversation. “He came, had coffee, and left.”
“What about Tom Poole, his partner?” He raised his voice a bit so Ed could hear him over the background chatter.
“Thomas Poole. There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. He used to be quite a troublemaker. Everybody was surprised when he went away to school and came back part of Fish and Wildlife. His family, they were some of the original survivalists around here. Living off the land and all that. Poached all the time, they did. I think he’s the only one left. His mama died of cancer a few years ago, I know for sure.”
And that, it appeared, was all the information he would get out of Ed. He stayed for a little while longer, chatting about nothing. Learning that a new casino and resort was in the planning stages. That the VFW was hosting a local beer tasting and art auction in honor of poetry month. Ed rambled on while Weir watched customers as they came and went, happily clutching Skagit’s best handmade coffee drinks.
He tossed a mental coin as to whether to wait until things calmed down and Sara might have time to talk, before deciding to head back to the hotel for more computer time. The walk might help him come up with a different angle. It wasn’t until he opened the door to his room that he realized he’d never ordered anything to eat. Later. For now he would relook at the facts. Again.
Krystad had been working a late night in his local office. Sometime between midnight and two a.m., a person had taken careful aim through the scope of a rifle and pulled the trigger. He was dead before he hit the floor, a single bullet straight through his left temple. The angle of the entry wound was such that the CSIs believed the shot came from one of the buildings across the street. The whole thing had a surreal, action movie aspect to it. Weir had seen plenty of crime scenes in his short career; this one left him scratching his head.
The deceased detective had primarily been working the geoduck smuggling case, but there were plenty of other open cases with equally viable suspects. Not that they had pinpointed a suspect yet. Mohammad and Tom suspected geoduck smugglers. Weir respected Mohammad’s intelligence and experience, so he continued to focus primarily on that angle, but he couldn’t help thinking that it didn’t have to be those disgusting giant clams.
Krystad’s notes were littered with doodles along the margins, half-finished thoughts, and coffee stains. Seriously, who wrote stuff on paper anymore? Peter Krystad. Dozens of spiral-bound notebooks were stacked on the shelves of his office, and they were all full of notes. Weir couldn’t tell if the doodles were part of the investigation or if Krystad had had a busy mind that needed to be kept on task.
There were phone numbers, all of which checked out as legitimate businesses and individuals. There were weird curlicues, smiley faces, and several notes that appeared random: “Call DOT,” “Check with Randy,” “Lunch/sushi!” He’d been planning a backcountry hiking trip for the summer; there was a reminder to apply for a hiking permit for Mt. Rainier along with gear he wanted to remember. Other doodles were less enlightening, circles and letters comingled. Who knew, Krystad could have had his own code, and unless they found the key it probably wouldn’t be cracked. But nothing that pointed toward a smoking gun. The easiest clue to decipher was the significant amount of coffee rings and empty Booking Room paper cups stacked up around his office, indicating a big part of his budget went to coffee.
Some of his notebooks were dated. Weir put the older ones aside and focused on the newer and undated ones. Not only did Krystad investigate crimes against the state’s resources, he and Poole volunteered for a variety of community education projects, visited the state forest camping areas during high season to deliver educational lectures, and helped local residents identify strange animals that wandered into their yards. The two were multipurpose state employees.
The exposure both Poole and Krystad had to the public was extensive. They attended a multitude of conferences to speak out against poaching and illegal harvesting, and had arrested hundreds of perpetrators over the course of their careers. In a small community like Skagit it was more of a question of who hadn’t they pissed off at some point? Yet Poole was still a
live.
Privately, Krystad was pretty boring. Hadn’t been married, no kids, no strange debts. No red flags. He’d been respected, if not well liked, by other Fish and Wildlife employees. Typically, some thought he was too intense and focused on rules and regulations, while others felt he hadn’t pushed hard enough to change archaic thinking about public lands and how they should be managed.
Poole was… interesting. Weir wasn’t certain he liked him. Prematurely bald, as in all the way, billiard-ball bald, yet strikingly handsome. Weir could only hope if he went that way he would look that good; the man had a nice head. When they were introduced, Poole had been wearing his dark-green Fish and Wildlife uniform, heavy boots, and glittering aviators. At 6’4” and two hundred twenty pounds, he was imposing.
A local guy, also not married, no kids, Poole lived well within his means. Normally, Weir would wonder if the two of them had been in some kind of relationship. They had worked closely together for over ten years. Even though Weir had a poor record when it came to picking out less-obvious gay men, Poole’s vibe wasn’t one that translated to gay in his head. The men had been very good friends, and that, he believed, was the end of it.
Part of what bothered him about Poole was that they had been indoors when they met. People who wore their sunglasses inside, in Weir’s opinion, had something to hide or were trying to be intimidating. At any rate, Weir took an instant dislike to the big man.
A week ago, an anonymous tip had been called in about a potential illegal geoduck harvest sometime in the next few days. Since then, he and Poole had spent hours every night steering a Fish and Wildlife patrol vessel through dark, choppy waters with no running lights, Weir armed only with a set of night-vision binoculars, trying to spot floating debris and buoys in the pitch-dark, while Poole navigated the bitterly cold waters of Skagit Bay and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, searching for other vessels out and about with no lights. Weir now knew more about geoducks and the people who smuggled them than he cared to.