And my hackles went up so high you could probably see them from space. Okay, so someone had…what, made me? Or…I couldn’t even think of a plausible alternative offhand. If I’d been seen watching one of the yoga studios, buying me books about drug kingpins seemed like the stupidest, weirdest possible way to let me know. Did someone think I’d been watching the yoga studios because I wanted to buy drugs? And they were, what, encouraging me?
Bursting into incredulous laughter felt like it might be a little socially incompetent, but I came close.
“I can’t tell you,” the clerk said, sounding a little strained. “I mean, he wanted to be anonymous.”
I bet he fucking did. If I did something that bizarre, I’d want to be anonymous too.
And I wished the clerk would stop touching the fucking books, because just to be on the safe side, I needed to get prints off of them.
“You sure?” I tried for a charming smile, wishing I’d taken a minute to practice one in the mirror over the sink that morning. I got a smile in return, but it looked more perfunctory than sincere. “I’d like to thank him myself. You know. It’s a nice gesture. Did he say why?”
“Just wanted me to tell you that a rich, eccentric customer thought it was too bad you always looked at books without being able to buy any, is all.”
Okay, this was a gay-friendly bookstore. More than gay-friendly. I tried another smile, this time going for suggestive. “Is he cute? Because, you know. Maybe I’d really like to thank him.”
The clerk shrugged. “Not really my type. I mean, I guess? But I’m not telling you who he is,” he said, his jaw setting mulishly.
Well, whatever. I could always come back with a warrant, if anything came up on the prints.
“Thanks,” I said, and snatched up the bag as soon as he’d slid the books back inside. “I appreciate your help.”
The clerk’s dark eyebrows rose in surprise. Fuck, fuck, fuck. So much for charming. That had come out sharp, professional, and very faintly sarcastic, just like every time I’d said it to some uncooperative witness in the past.
I took the bag and headed out. The locals could run the prints for me, and I needed to collect more files from the BPD anyway.
2
Alec
Even when an FBI agent asked for a fingerprint analysis, it wasn’t like on TV where five minutes later you had the perp’s shoe size, blood type, last three known addresses, and favorite type of beer.
“Yeah, we’ll get it when we can, we’re backlogged,” and then a click as the line went dead…that was what I’d gotten when I’d called that morning looking for an update. After dropping off the books, I’d spent the rest of the evening sitting in the beater sedan I’d borrowed from the BPD, parked across from an alley behind the yoga studio most likely to be the front. I’d come up with zilch. Two deliveries, but one was energy drinks and the other came from a fast-food pizza place. So much for healthy living, but I couldn’t arrest them for hypocrisy.
I spent the later evening going through more files, likewise zilch.
So I went back to the bookstore as soon as I’d made my morning complement of phone calls. A different clerk, a tough-looking young woman, stood behind the counter, ringing out a guy with a toddler jumping up and down and trying to pull his jacket off. They were all noisy and occupied enough that I slipped in without drawing more of her attention than an absent glance, and I parked myself in front of true crime again.
I spent an hour flipping idly through the books, occasionally propping myself against the shelf in a casual stance that let me take a look around the store.
No one paid me any particular attention.
Eventually I left and got some lunch, pausing only to glare at every yoga studio I passed.
My SSA called wanting an update as I wandered and considered my next move, and I ducked into a quiet alley to take her call. Jenna hung up after I’d filled her in, chuckling under her breath and muttering, “Fucking yoga mats, have fun.” I liked Jenna, and more than that, I respected her. Right then I wanted to toss her off a pier into Lake Champlain.
I slipped the phone into my pocket and ducked out of the alley. Little milling knots of happy shoppers strolled along the brick-paved walkway of the open marketplace, eating ice cream or drinking coffee or chatting and carrying shopping bags full of artisanal whatevers. Tables and chairs scattered along the edges of the central walkway held more happy people.
None of them bothered to give me a second glance, except for a couple of giggling teenage girls.
Yeah, good luck with that, even if they’d been legal.
A guy crossed the walkway, his swinging-hipped gait catching my eye. Well, that and the purple-and-blue hair. Fuck, he had a nice ass. Small but round, like it’d fit perfectly in my hands.
I managed to tear my gaze away from his ass and focus back on the hair.
I’d seen that hair. He’d been in Vino and Veritas a couple of times, at least—he’d looked at me. He’d just been casually checking me out, or so I’d thought at the time.
Quickly, but not so quickly the girls could think I was approaching them, I crossed the marketplace and followed that flash of purple hair through the crowd. He disappeared for a moment, and then I caught sight of him walking into Vino and Veritas.
After waiting a discreet thirty seconds, I went in too. This time a line of customers waiting to be rung up completely absorbed the clerk’s attention.
I caught a flash of purple as I went back to my usual section, but it vanished again by the time I got around the crush of customers. No worries. If he’d been the one watching me, he’d put himself in my line of sight again.
Pulling out a book at random, I leaned up against the shelf, my peripheral vision busy watching for purple hair.
And there he was. Behind one of the curved freestanding shelves that filled the middle of the shop, I caught a flicker of purple. And then he leaned around the sign on top of the shelf, peeking at me with one eye. I casually turned a page. He leaned a little more.
Another page. And now he was openly staring, thinking himself unobserved in his turn.
God fucking dammit. He was cute as hell, enough to be wildly out of my league—but he also looked exactly like someone who’d sell heroin out of a yoga studio.
Had someone made me, while I’d been staking out that studio over on Bradley? Maybe. Or maybe I’d been seen walking into the BPD station. I hadn’t been dressed or acting like an agent, so possibly this guy thought I was an informant, some kind of rival drug dealer eliminating the competition.
Either way, AD Kyle would be pissed if this went south. Completely absurd connections to yoga aside, the smuggling operation he had his eyes on was high-volume enough to make this a serious case, and as much as I hated being here and hated having to admit it—I was taking it seriously too.
I had to. I mean, what was next, if I screwed this up? Getting posted to the Omaha field office so I could spend the rest of my career chasing down stolen corn?
And yet. How seriously would it be possible to take someone who thought making contact in a drug-dealing scenario would be best accomplished through buying expensive hardbacks about Pablo Escobar? Someone who’d grown up on cheesy movies about the drama of drug smuggling, that’s who.
The cute little possible-junkie kept sneaking peeks at me around the shelf and over the book he obviously wasn’t paying the slightest attention to.
And fuck, but I wished he’d been fixated on me for a good reason. A pound-him-into-oblivion reason. I hadn’t gotten laid in a while.
A while being nearly a year, ever since Kris got in the shower and left his phone out on the table. I hadn’t snooped. But the explicit and unmistakable message from his previous night’s Grindr hookup had popped up right as I leaned over to grab the remote for the TV.
Purple hair. Not my type. A glint of silver in his ear caught my attention as he shifted to the other side of the shelf sign to peek at me with his other eye. What color were his eyes? Not
dark, I could tell that much from a distance. But that wasn’t enough.
For some reason, I needed to know what color his eyes were.
Fuck it, guys with multiple ear piercings weren’t my type either. To be fair, I had a bad-drunken-decision tattoo on my chest, but still. It didn’t show under professional clothing.
And even if I could be flexible on the piercings, drug dealers and addicts definitely weren’t my type, and if they started turning into my type, I wouldn’t be AD Kyle’s type, and that would be a bigger problem.
I turned another page.
Off to the side, the door between the wine bar and the bookstore opened, and the clerk who’d given me the books stepped through. I kept my head down and my eyes slanted to the side, peripheral vision turned up high.
The clerk stopped for a second, his gaze flicking from me to the guy with the purple hair and then back again. Purple-hair froze, and then it looked like he might have shaken his head slightly. The clerk shrugged and moved on to the counter, exchanging a few words with the girl there, and then headed back to the bar.
I wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.
The cute little possibly-criminal twink hadn’t just been watching me; he’d for sure bought me the books.
I knew. Did he know I knew? Probably not, since I hadn’t so much as twitched while I surreptitiously watched the exchange, and I’d kept flipping through the book and frowning like I always did.
The guy pushed his book back into the shelf with a thud audible even from where I stood halfway across the store, and he slipped away. I tensed, poised to follow. He didn’t leave, though. Instead, he followed the clerk through the connecting door and went into the bar.
I waited until I was sure he’d disappeared and wasn’t lurking by the door and spying on me, and then I set the book I’d been ignoring back on the shelf and headed out the front door, keeping to the side so I couldn’t be seen from the bar.
Two of the shops across the way had an alcove between them that just fit one guy leaning up and casually scrolling through his phone. The scents of handmade candles and freshly-baked something-or-other wafted from either side, making me instantly headachy and hungry at the same time.
Shit, maybe I should’ve followed the guy into the bar and gotten a drink myself. Not like I couldn’t use one. And if the clerk had some connection too…but no, that was way too paranoid.
And—no. I’d wait for him to come out, and I’d follow him, and then we’d see what we’d see. Maybe I’d see him go to one of the yoga studios I suspected, or possibly meet with someone. Or make a suspicious phone call. If I saw where he lived, I’d be able to run the address, get his name, check his criminal history. And if he happened to catch me at it, I’d play dumb and act like I’d thought he’d been hitting on me. He’d see what I wanted him to see.
Either way, I definitely wouldn’t be seeing his perfect little ass sticking up in the air waiting for my cock.
Anyway, he wasn’t my fucking type.
God dammit, I hated this case.
Gabe
Shit, that’d been close. Rainn quirked an eyebrow at me as I glugged down my probably very nice glass of malbec. I’d only learned his name when I bellied up to the bar, breathlessly ordered a glass of anything he could pour quickly, and gotten an introduction and an instruction to take it easy.
God, I hadn’t even tasted the wine. Whatever. I waved the empty glass at him, wordlessly begging for another, and dropped down onto a bar stool.
Rainn popped the stopper out of the same bottle and upended it into my glass, not even bothering to grab a clean one. This was a nice place, I realized as I glanced around while he poured. Not the kind of place my snobbish family would set foot in—and not because of the queer thing, but the anyone’s allowed in thing—but nice, the kind of place where you got a fresh glass every time. Quiet jazz played over discreetly placed speakers, and all the leather and dark wood made it feel cozy, pleasant, and upscale.
Definitely a clean-glass kind of bar. Since Rainn hadn’t paused to get one, he must have understood just how desperate I was for some…not liquid courage, because after staring at the scowl on Hot Dude’s handsome, stubbled face, no liquid in the world would give me enough courage to actually talk to him.
Liquid anesthesia, maybe. I wondered if I could synthesize something that would control blushing without completely fucking up the rest of my body’s circulatory system. Maybe a cooling gel, topically applied to reduce flushing? Maybe that already existed. Like a lot of chemists—I slugged another huge gulp of my wine at the thought, because I couldn’t really call myself a chemist anymore, and that hurt—I didn’t actually know or care much about medical science. I liked the way the atoms danced in perfect harmony when I did things right, swung and caught and held hands, forming new and beautiful patterns. Patterns that intersected with other patterns, and eventually maybe made your face cool down.
But honestly it was mostly the molecules themselves that interested me. What they could do to the human body usually didn’t.
Still. Ethanol could be a glorious, glorious thing when it affected the human body. Two little carbons and an oxygen with their six tiny hydrogen friends. Rearrange them a little and they’d do nothing except blow up if you lit a match. In this arrangement, they made me not care as much that I had no career, no boyfriend, and an embarrassing crush on a guy who’d probably dismiss me if he knew me. I set the now-empty glass on the counter and waved at Rainn again, starting to slouch a little against the bar.
Yeah, that was better. Liquid anesthesia.
Rainn poured the third glass with a disapproving frown, but at least he poured it. I sipped this one more slowly, taking the time to look at the sign showing the night’s wine specials. The malbec promised blackberry, cocoa powder, and leather. Mmm. Leather. Like his jacket…the way he’d smell if he pushed me up against a wall and leaned in. I’d catch a whiff of leather then, and maybe something warm and spicy and dangerous.
The malbec delivered, and I actually chilled out enough to enjoy it. Besides, I’d better. I was pretty sure Rainn was going to cut me off. The sun wouldn’t be down for another two hours, and even though with May’s long days that still put me firmly into cocktail hour…well, day drinking. He had a point.
I finished the wine, toyed with the glass for a minute, and then left an extra-large tip on the bar, slipping away while Rainn was distracted by leaning in to whisper in the ear of a cute, fresh-faced guy with light brown hair sitting at the other end of the bar.
And then more than whisper. Yeah, that was a kiss, and a look in the guy’s eyes that said more than words could, and a smile that—well, that nearly undid all the good the wine had done me.
That. I wanted that.
A guy in a suit, stylish gray tie loosened and top shirt button undone, smiled at me from one of the booths as I made my way to the front door. A handsome guy, with long legs and a familiar gleam in his dark eyes.
On any other day, maybe. I’d loosened up enough that I could manage to flirt, and then I’d want to take the guy home with me and get fucked and drink some more and…and that wasn’t that, and abruptly, it also wasn’t nearly enough. My chest tightened, and I swallowed down the lump in my throat and headed out the door, not even bothering to return the smile.
The sun had slanted down enough that the Church Street marketplace had fallen into shadow, with lights coming on all along the promenade. God, it would’ve been nice to saunter out of Vino and Veritas hand-in-hand with someone, stop for ice cream, and then head home and make love while the sun went down.
If I had a couple of cocktails when I got home alone, I might get sloshed enough that a club would start sounding like a good idea. Wednesday night wasn’t exactly primetime for pulling someone, but at that point I wouldn’t be all that picky, either.
I headed south along Church. I’d walk home. About eight blocks, partly uphill…and I needed to stay in shape. Not that I had a ton of muscle, but I liked to be toned, a
t least. An eight-pack, or really any kind of pack, wasn’t in my future, but I was kind of proud of my taut, tight thighs and ass, not gonna lie.
About three blocks into the walk, Church dead-ended, with a little park across the street.
Fuck it, I wanted to watch the sunset, and even though my condo had a killer view—came with the price tag—I also didn’t want to be inside just yet, dealing with my heaped-up laundry and empty fridge. I crossed in the middle of the block and strolled along a little tree-shaded concrete path through swaths of emerald-green lawn. I walked by this park all the time without bothering to enjoy it. Kids played there a lot, but the play area and little baseball diamond were empty now. I spotted a mom with a stroller in the distance at the other end, just leaving the park and presumably heading for home.
Peaceful. I inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of green growing things, clearing my head.
Something raised the hair on the back of my neck. A prickle of awareness.
My head whipped around as I scanned behind me, and then to the left and right.
Nothing. When I turned back, the mom with her stroller had vanished too. I shrugged, trying to shake it off. Fuck, a few glasses of wine and a little bit of maudlin bullshit and I suddenly turned paranoid. Who’d want to sneak up on me in a park? I didn’t look like I had money to steal, even though I did. And if someone wanted it, I’d hand it over, anyway.
A bench sat off to the side under a tree and near the side of a small building that looked like it probably held landscaping equipment, and I headed for it. It didn’t have the best view of the sunset, but fuck it.
Almost at the bench, I changed my mind, the way people do sometimes when they’re drunk and over it. Nope. Home. I wasn’t going to sit on a park bench alone and mope like a loser.
I spun around, and I froze—with Hot Dude standing equally still a few yards from me, right next to a tree he’d almost certainly been hiding behind as I walked by it.
My heart went from normal to a million in an instant, and I staggered back a step, feeling my eyes go as wide and round as dinner plates. He’d followed me. He’d been hiding, stalking me, and he had what, maybe sixty pounds of muscle on me? More? Plus the look in his eyes and the set of his shoulders, his loose, ready stance…this guy knew how to take care of himself.
Undercover (Vino and Veritas) Page 2