Infected: Lesser Evils Page 38

  There were other ways to get numb. And this was probably cheaper.

  ROAN wondered what he should blame when he woke up feeling nauseous. He wasn’t the one who’d had alcohol, and yet he was the one relatively sure he was two steps away from losing his dinner. Where was the justice in that?

  When he was sure he could stand up, he went to the bathroom and took a promethazine, which Rosenberg had prescribed him for the nausea. Promethazine made him tired, but what the hell, he was kind of tired all the time anyways.

  Roan went downstairs, checking the time on the stove and figuring he should be up anyways. He got a Natural Brew ginger ale from the fridge and enjoyed a gulp, both sweet and spicy at the same time, and desperately wanted a piece of toast. But here was the thing—in this lavishly appointed kitchen, with a slaughterhouse’s worth of knives, stainless steel sinks, and granite countertops, with a massive fridge and an air convection oven, there was no toaster. These guys were power gays, and apparently didn’t do carbs. Fuck them, they had no idea what they were missing; Roan loved carbs. But the fact that there was no toaster meant no toast. He just heated the bread in the microwave, which made it warm and soft, but depressingly lacking in crunch. Still, throw some melted butter on it, and it was all good. (But it wasn’t toast, damn it.)

  Once the meds, the ginger, and the bread had settled his stomach, Roan focused on his Jephson case notes, and wondered if he could shred them like a drama queen. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say he’d been sent on a wild goose chase. But why? Who’d spend the money just to annoy and irritate him? You could do that for free, and many people did.

  Well, Oliver was probably pretty close to being kicked out by the hospital, so he’d be up to more of a grilling today. Maybe Roan would find out exactly why he was lying about the assault, or at least find out a little more about his Aunt Abby. Something was going on here, and he wasn’t sure finding Adam was at the heart of it all.

  When the phone rang, he was going to let it go, but then he thought it might wake up Dylan if it went on too long, so he answered it. It was Seb, telling him he might want to come by his own office. When Roan heard a crackle of radios in the background, he figured things had taken another shitty turn.

  He took the bike so he’d get there faster, and arrived in time for the sun to break through the low clouds, and for the firemen to start rolling up their hoses.

  The office of MK Investigations had been scorched, discolored by smoke and char marks that could have been a Rorschach test, an ink blot covering the place where his door had once been. Broken glass glistened like mica on the macadam, and beneath the black smudges of burn marks the words “Fag” and “Catfucker” were still visible. Other than that, the building looked remarkably intact.

  Seb was standing nearby, watching the firemen pack up their equipment, and Roan sidled up and joined him, mimicking his folded arms stance. “This was no boating accident,” Roan said.

  Seb raised an eyebrow at that. “Wow, still a sarcastic bastard in the face of adversity, huh? Well, it was caught early. Your neighbor, a Doctor Braunbeck, arrived to open his office and called in the fire. They got it before it could do major damage, although you probably got some water damage.”

  “Braunbeck? Ah, that gorp-loving bastard finally paid off.”

  “Gorp?”

  “Don’t ask. Although, if you ask him nicely, he’ll probably give you some.” The wind shifted, and Roan winced at the strong scent of gasoline.

  Seb must have seen it, because he asked, “Molotov?”

  “I’m not scenting alcohol, just gas.”

  “Why aren’t you more disturbed by this?”

  It was a good question, but all Roan could do was shrug. “It’s just an office, and no one was hurt. Worse things have happened.” He liked Seb, he really did, but he wasn’t sure he was ever going to tell him about the tumors. The fact that Holden knew was one person too many, but at least he could keep a secret better than the NSA.

  “That’s a very mature attitude.” He paused in a way that suggested more was coming shortly. Roan wasn’t disappointed. “The Chief wants me to chuck you in the back of the cruiser. She thinks you’re avoiding her.”

  “Me? Never.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sarcasm aside, you comin’ with me or do I break out the cuffs?”

  “Like any cuffs could hold me. Yeah, I’ll come. I hafta file a report anyways.”

  Somehow it figured that a morning that started with nausea would end with him getting reamed by the Chief. At least not much worse could happen from here on out.

  35

  Angela’s Secret

  IN RETROSPECT, he would have preferred the Chief chew him a new one.

  Chief Matthews always had a surprisingly orderly office, like she felt she should set a good example for the troops, and maybe that was the case. She had a new photo on her desk of her soldier nephew who was off in Afghanistan, and Roan idly wondered if she’d sacrificed any hope of a personal life in aid of a career, but then he mentally dismissed it, mainly because it wasn’t any of his business if she had, or if she was keeping any relationship she might have had a secret. For all its vaunted “diversity,” the police department was still a man’s world. Shaking off the old (white) boy’s club just wasn’t as easy as the PR office wanted it to be.

  She offered Roan coffee, which smelled better than the usual, but he knew the cop shop coffee would strip the paint off a tugboat. He declined and stuck to Black Black, some odd-tasting Japanese gum that had enough caffeine to keep him buzzing. Sometimes the smell/taste hit him like a punch at first, but that wasn’t always a bad thing.

  Chief Matthews was low-key and kind, which Roan was always suspicious of in a superior. When she told him the other officer wasn’t pressing charges, unofficial or official, against him, he wasn’t surprised. The list went like this: you never admitted 1) a woman kicked your ass, 2) a gay guy kicked your ass, or 3) an infected kicked your ass (unless they were in cat form, then that was okay). The fact that he was two out of three meant he could count on the old boy’s club keeping their mouths shut, although it meant he went straight to the top of their shit list. But since he was already there, no harm, no foul. (And since they knew there was something weird about him, they weren’t eager to get into off-duty rematches.)

  Still, she wasn’t happy with him. She let him know that as disturbing as the scene was, she couldn’t allow officers or advisers on the scene to lose their cool, which he agreed with, but he had to ask what the hell was up with that investigation. She straightened out papers on her desk that didn’t need straightening before telling him it was a crime and being investigated as such, and she hoped he wasn’t conducting his own investigation into it. Roan lied and said he wasn’t, as he pressed her for information on their investigation. Since it was an open case, she couldn’t say much, but after a little pressure, she admitted it was being investigated as “desecration of a corpse,” multiple counts.

  Roan waited for a punch line, but after he was sure none was forthcoming, he had to swallow back the urge to scream at her. “If there were Human-shaped skins hanging from the ceiling, there’d be no doubt they were murdered,” he snapped, clenching his hands together in his lap so he didn’t make fists.

  “I understand that this is upsetting, but—”

  “No you don’t,” he interrupted, unable to contain himself. “I’ve been run out of my own house, my husband had to switch jobs, I would have been attacked in the hospital if I wasn’t friends with an oversized hockey player, someone tried to attack me in my office, and now someone has tried to burn down my office, and all in the space of a couple months. And these are just attacks aimed at me and mine. If you widen the scope to attacks and harassment on all infecteds, things get much uglier. I’m sure you understand from a logical point of view, but until this is your life, you can’t really understand it. If things were different, I could have been one of those skins hanging up in that slaughterhouse. It could have been—”
>
  He paused as he choked on Paris’s name, and suddenly remembered quite vividly the time he’d checked on Paris when he was transitioning from tiger to Human, but was still tiger. He’d reached through the bars of his cage and put his hand on Paris’s side. His fur was hot and soft, and Roan could feel the solidity of his ribcage and his frantic heartbeat beneath. He was panting for breath, unconscious, his heartbeat jagged and thready, and that was when Roan first knew he was on the downhill slope to death. He could feel his muscles beneath his skin, twitching and writhing like angry snakes, and he’d dug his hand into his fur, hoping that Paris knew he was there, and knowing damn well that he couldn’t. The memory was so vivid Roan could feel Paris’s feverish body heat under his hand, could smell the odd animal scent that was mostly tiger but partly Human, and it brought tears to his eyes.

  Suddenly Chief Matthews was there, sitting forward with her forearms on her desk, her eyebrows tented into a V. “Roan, are you okay?”

  He sat there blinking, wondering what the hell had just happened. It wasn’t a memory, not as he knew them. He was right back there, sitting on the cold basement floor, his hand entwined in Paris’s silky fur, his scent filling the room. It was like time travel almost… except it wasn’t. This wasn’t a fucking episode of Lost, he hadn’t gone anywhere, he was just… what? Seized by a memory?

  Roan did remember why he was here, what he was talking about, although a sense of disorientation lingered. “What did I do?” he asked, aware that just asking that would clue her in on how deeply not okay he was.

  She sat back in her chair, which creaked like an old floorboard, looking more confused than anything. Maybe she thought this was part of a ploy on his part. “Nothing. You just sort of… zoned out.”

  Which told him next to nothing. Still, it was okay. No drooling, no barking, no blackout kind of rages. Good. Not that it told him anything about what the fuck had just happened, but zoned out was really the best-case scenario. “I don’t think I can have this conversation right now,” he said, standing up. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the complete truth either.

  “Roan, if—”

  “My people are dying,” he snapped, the one thing he really wanted to say. “And it looks like no one cares. Not this department, not the government, and civilians think nothing of killing us for sport. They’re not even arrested for it, for fuck’s sake. And I know I’m part of the problem, don’t think I don’t hate myself for killing my own people, because I do, and all the justification in the world doesn’t change anything. Some of them call me an Uncle Tom for working with the police, and I can’t say I blame them.”

  “Bullshit,” she replied, a rare curse word from her. “It’s a matter of public safety. You protect more than you kill.”

  “Not from their perspective. I’m not sure that’s true from my perspective either.” He turned toward the door. “I can’t do this today. I’m sorry.”

  “Roan—” she began, but he was gone, out of her office and making a quick beeline for the exit. Someone tried to talk to him, but he ignored him and all but ran out the door.

  Once Roan found a quiet spot around the back of the cop shop, he sagged against the wall and almost collapsed. What was wrong? What was happening to him?

  No, strike that—he knew exactly what was happening. He just wondered why now.

  Fuck it, it didn’t matter. Right now, he was going to get that son of a bitch cat killer, and then the virus could do whatever it wanted with him.

  It would anyways.

  HOLDEN was initially disoriented, sure he was in his own bed and then sure he wasn’t because he wasn’t alone, but soon he remembered it all and worked it out. A toxic amount of self-loathing mixed with gin and a horny bi jock added up to happy fun time with Scott. Said bi jock was sleeping like a corpse on the opposite side of the bed, one arm draped down to the carpet, the blanket heaped up on the floor, the sheet just covering what was honestly one of the world’s greatest asses. Seriously, that thing was a work of art. If that’s what skating did, Holden needed to take it up now.

  God, this was weird. He never brought anyone back here, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d fucked someone because he wanted to, not because he was paid to do so. Had it been… no way, it couldn’t have been that long. At some point, sex had become a job, and he was happy to leave it there. He always felt sex was kind of overrated anyways, but that was probably hilarious coming from a hooker.

  Holden felt like an idiot, like this was just an incredibly boneheaded move, but when he tried to dissect the reason why, he couldn’t find it. He took a quick shower and catalogued a couple of new bruises. He and Scott had had a bit of a wrestle for supremacy, nothing really rough, just a macho exertion of power that was, admittedly, something of a turn on. Most of the bruises were incidental, smashing into walls, hitting the floor, although he had a couple on his back that looked like Scott had dug his fingers in a little too hard. Not that he’d really noticed at the time. His client tonight wouldn’t care; in fact, he might find it a turn-on.

  He was back in his bedroom, getting dressed quietly, when he realized how stupid it was he was being quiet. It was his fucking place, and this was exactly why he didn’t have company here. He put on his jeans and knelt on the bed, giving Scott a shove. “Come on, big guy. You don’t hafta go home, but you can’t stay here.” He barely grunted a response, so Holden gave him a slap on the ass, and just about broke his damn hand. Good lord, he had an ass of granite. Not so much buns of steel as buns of adamantium.

  Scott finally roused sufficiently to raise his head, and murmur, “What time is it?”

  “How the fuck do I know, you’re the one who still has his damn watch on.”

  “I do?” He raised his right wrist to his face and looked at it. That’s when he suddenly sat up, exclaiming, “Oh fuck, I missed the morning skate.”

  Holden sat back on the bed, and admired the line of his back. For a skinny boy, he had a nice set of manly broad shoulders. “Which means what exactly? They slap your hand and take away your birthday?”

  “No, the coach’ll make me do an extra drill. But since this was an optional skate, it probably won’t be so bad.” He then yawned, stretched, and dry washed his face, all handsomely, as if he couldn’t do anything in a homely manner, no matter how banal it was. “The really sucky thing about hockey is working out all the fucking time. It’s like I spend half my day in a rink or a gym.”

  “Explains your body.”

  “Yeah, well….” Scott agreed, trailing off, as what else was he going to say? He mussed up his bedhead hair even more, and said, “That was the hottest sex I think I’ve ever had.”

  It was pretty fucking hot. But Holden might just think that because it had been an eon since he’d had sex with genuine desire involved, and not some pill-based substitute combined with acting. “I’m good at my job,” Holden said.

  Scott turned and looked at him, somewhat skeptical. “That’s all it was?”

  How was he supposed to answer that? Yes it was, but also no it wasn’t. There was no answer that would make Holden feel any better, and he couldn’t humor this kid. And he was a kid—he’d thought he was at least drinking age, but now he pegged him at twenty. Scott just had the attitude and bearing of an older person. At least he knew there was no way in hell he was any kind of virgin. “Couldn’t have been a date. You never bought me dinner.”

  Scott smirked, and his ghostly blue eyes sparkled. “I could buy you breakfast.”

  Holden gave him a tight, insincere smile as he got off the bed and went to his dresser. He needed to get a shirt on before Scott thought about a second round. “Maybe some other time.”

  Scott didn’t say anything, and as Holden searched his drawer for a shirt, Scott got up and went into the bathroom. By the time he came out, Holden was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting on his socks. Scott had a beautiful body, and while he wasn’t hung like a horse, he was about average, and that was okay. Actually Holden preferred av
erage to too big and too small. Scott looked around the floor, and asked, “Where’s my clothes?”

  “Mostly out in the living room.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You can borrow some underwear if you want. We’re probably close to the same size, and I think yours got ripped.”

  He scratched his head, clearly trying to remember. “Right. Which drawer?”

  “Top.”

  Scott opened it and rummaged through, while Holden enjoyed the lovely rear view for a moment before returning to putting on his socks. They were awkwardly silent before Scott asked, “What do I owe you for last night?” There was a chill to his voice, like any of the cheer from before was draining away.

  With a sigh, Holden realized he didn’t want to encourage the kid, but he didn’t need to give him a slap either. “Nothing. The whole thing about hooking is you get the money in advance. I didn’t, so… consider this a freebie.”

  Scott looked at him over his shoulder, and gave him a lazy, deeply sexy smile. He bet Scott knew it was sexy too, the bastard. “First hit’s free, then I’m hooked, right?”

  “Something like that.” Scott looked good in his underwear, a pair of blue boxer briefs that were a little roomy on Scott, but not so much that Holden felt fat. If hockey didn’t pan out, Scott had a bright future as an underwear model. “You can also borrow one of my shirts, if you need to.”

  “Was mine ripped?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Hmm.” He went out into the living room, and after a moment, he shouted, “Have you been out here?”

  “Not yet. Why?”

  “We… um. We made a mess.”

  “What kind of mess?” Holden got up and went out, wondering when that happened. He saw for himself: the end table was knocked over, so was the coffee table, and a lamp had broken and was in several different pieces on the carpet, while everything that had been on the coffee table—his remotes, a couple of magazines, a book—was heaped up haphazardly beside the couch. The armchair was also tipped over on its side, but Holden couldn’t remember that bit at all. Maybe when they hit the coffee table….