along the inside of Micah’s lower gum, his eyes never leaving Micah’s. His fingers slid out of Micah’s mouth, along his
lower lip and his cheek to grip Micah’s chin.
He smiled and kissed Micah hungrily, biting at his lip
gently. Micah held to him, hugging him close.
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Addison pulled away from him, then began to lower
himself back to his knees. Micah tried to keep him on his
feet, wanting more of the sensual kiss as a slight buzz began to settle around him, but Addison slid out of his grasp. He took Micah into his mouth once more, quickening his
movements when Micah grasped his hair again.
He knew what he was doing to Micah, driving him
slowly but surely to a frustrated, aggressive, violent fucking.
The violence was part of the appeal, after all.
DETECTIVE Sam Walker sighed loudly and lowered the
camera he held, looking down and pursing his lips
thoughtfully. He had snapped a few pictures when the two
men had entered the apartment, and more when the bag of
what appeared to be cocaine had made an appearance, but
had stopped soon after. He wasn’t quite sure why, other than he now felt more like a voyeur than a cop.
“Kinky,” Morgan observed wryly as he watched through
a small pair of binoculars.
“Gives new meaning to the phrase blow job, huh?” Sam
muttered flatly.
Morgan barked a laugh and shook his head. “But I don’t
get it,” he huffed after a moment of listening to the relative silence coming over the long-range listening devices. “Isn’t blow supposed to be a numbing agent?” he asked finally.
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“Yep,” Sam answered as he looked back up at the open
doors of the balcony of Micah Parrish’s studio apartment. He couldn’t help but wonder the same thing Morgan was
wondering. Where the hell was the appeal in that?
“What’s the point of getting head when you can’t feel it?”
Morgan asked dubiously, echoing Sam’s thoughts. “What’s
the point of fucking when you can’t feel it?”
“Maybe he likes it like that,” Sam answered with a
careless shrug. He didn’t want to think too hard about it.
Other people’s kinks made his head hurt. “The high from
oral ingestion is pretty weak too,” he added thoughtfully,
trying to see behind the thought processes of Addison
Satterwight. “Won’t kill you, not likely to get you hooked, unless you do it every fucking hour. Smart kid.”
Morgan huffed in disagreement and went back to his
surveillance notes.
Sam glanced over at him and then back up at the
windows. Their long-range microphones were producing very
few sounds. Sam found it odd that neither man had spoken
a word to each other during the entire time they had been
following them. They’d picked them up leaving the gates of
the country club over an hour ago. Even now, well into the
spectacle, they weren’t making a lot of noise.
It could mean a lot of things, the fact that the two of
them didn’t speak. It could mean that they knew they were
being followed and were keeping silent so they didn’t
implicate themselves in anything, in which case buying
smack on the strip had been pretty goddamned stupid. It
could also mean that they didn’t have much to talk about,
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which would imply that they were each just there for the sex, drugs, and murder-for-shitloads-of-money plots. It could
also mean that Addison, who was reportedly a bit of a
jabbermouth, just had his mouth full at the moment.
“You really like the brothers for this thing?” Sam asked
after a moment of thoughtful silence.
“Not the other brother,” Morgan answered almost
immediately. “But him and his buddy up there? Oh, yeah,”
he said emphatically with a point of his pen toward the
windows. “I mean, would you let someone put cocaine on
your johnson and risk forever losing feeling in it?” he
inquired of Sam incredulously.
Sam grinned ruefully and shook his head in answer.
“No, that definitely takes a certain type of… trust.”
“That guy would do anything for Satterwight,” Morgan
continued. “Anything. Mark my words, man, they’re good for this. We just have to stay on Satterwight until he fucks up.
And with this fucking guy, he’s into so much shit you know
he’ll do it sooner rather than later. We’ll nail ’em for it.”
Sam watched his partner for a long moment and then
looked back up at the balcony. A grunt came over the set of headphones Sam had cocked onto one ear earlier. He raised
his camera and peered through the long-range lens to see
past the open blinds once more, just in time to see Parrish pull Satterwight up off his knees by his hair and shove him at the bed. The angle obscured anything more.
Sam lowered the camera again and frowned
thoughtfully. The sounds of pleasure being emitted by the
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surveillance equipment grew more frequent and insistent as
Sam sat with his head lowered and listened with a frown.
“What’s wrong with you?” Morgan asked as he glanced
at Sam.
Sam grimaced and shrugged. “Something about this
case,” he muttered without looking up from the Ford logo on the steering wheel. “Bugs me.”
“You mean besides following this wingnut around and
recording nothing but low-grade porn?” Morgan asked with
another jab of his pen in the direction of the darkened
windows of Micah Parrish’s apartment.
“We have to supplement our income somehow,” Sam
joked weakly.
“Seriously,” Morgan grunted as he went back to writing
notes in his log. “You think your people would buy this
shit?” he asked as he wrote.
“My people?” Sam asked as he looked at his partner in
amusement. “You mean white people?”
“No, man, you know, you don’t-ask-don’t-tell types,”
Morgan answered as he grinned down at his pad of paper.
Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I wouldn’t take
my word for what passes these days,” he answered easily.
“What, not eatin’ good in the gayborhood lately?”
Morgan asked.
Sam barked a laugh. He had no idea how Ray Morgan
said some of these things with a straight face.
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“Get back to your damn notes,” he ordered fondly.
Morgan snickered quietly, never having looked up from
his log. After a moment he began shaking his head as he
wrote. “Everyone we’ve talked to says this kid is so smart,”
he mused. “He must be hiding it well,” he mumbled.
“That was my point,” Sam said as he looked up and
glanced at his partner. “If he’s even marginally intelligent then he has to know we’d at least be checking up on him
and his brother. I mean, I’m talking not wearing a helmet
kind of IQ, here,” he said emphatically. Morgan snickered
quietly a
s he continued writing his observations. “And we
know he’s not stupid. But the first thing he does is go to a nightclub and buy blow right under our noses,” Sam
continued in a mystified voice.
“We should have followed him in,” Morgan muttered
with a shake of his head.
“Yeah, because you’d really blend,” Sam countered
wryly. “I don’t give a shit about coke dealers,” he added
thoughtfully. “Is this kid really capable of pulling this thing off like we think it went down?” he posed.
Morgan shrugged. “Anything’s possible,” he pointed out.
“I mean, this took patience,” Sam continued. “We know
he’s smart enough to do it, but is he patient enough for it?
As coked out as he is?”
Morgan shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t peg him
as ate up when we first saw him,” he observed. “Maybe it’s
just an ice cream habit.”
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Sam nodded grudgingly. Morgan was right; Satterwight
hadn’t struck him as a constant user, either. If anything he was using light. There was still life behind his eyes.
“And in our scenario, the final dose was brought on
because the perp ran out of patience,” Morgan pointed out to poke one more hole in Sam’s questioning.
Sam shook his head and looked back up at the window.
“I don’t know. I just feel like I’m missing something,” he
muttered.
“Yeah, your bed,” Morgan grunted.
Sam laughed softly.
They sat in the car sweating together in silence for a few
minutes. They had the windows cracked, and they were both
in their street clothes, thin polo shirts and khakis that were meant for golf courses and wicking moisture, but it was still stifling in the unmarked Ford. And it smelled like some sort of food Sam couldn’t quite identify. Mayonnaise and
something else. Vinegar. Cole slaw, maybe? There was really no telling. Sam was certain he didn’t really want to know.
Morgan finally glanced over at him and cleared his
throat. “You know we’re going to have to talk to Parrish,
right?” he said.
“Yeah, so?” Sam answered. They were both studiously
ignoring the sounds coming from the microphone now.
“We might have to lean on him,” Morgan continued.
Sam made a gesture with his hand for his partner to get
to the point.
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“Are you gonna be able to do that?” Morgan asked in
exasperation.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Sam asked in confusion.
“Well, because you’re both….” Morgan made an
ineffectual gesture with his hand toward the window across
the street.
“What, Ray?” Sam prodded in exasperation.
“Are you gonna be able to slam this guy for being queer
if it comes to that?” Morgan asked finally, sounding both
uncomfortable and relieved as he asked it. “It might be our only angle.”
Sam rolled his eyes and leaned back into his seat. “I’m
an equal-opportunity asshole, all right?” he finally said with a sigh.
He sat and stared out the windshield of the unmarked
car, not really looking at anything. From here they couldn’t see what was happening in Parrish’s apartment without a
periscope, anyway. They could hear it, though.
At least they knew why Satterwight was fucking around
with Parrish, anyway. They were still going strong.
Sam shook off that thought and frowned harder. It
wouldn’t be easy, getting to them. They were going to close ranks. Morgan was right; their only way to get to Parris
might just be that he was gay.
And that didn’t sit well with Sam.
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He could feel Morgan’s eyes on him. He glanced
sideways and then rolled his eyes. “What?” he demanded
irritably.
“You need a hug?” Morgan asked, barely able to keep
the shake of laughter out of his voice.
Sam didn’t even look at him as he reached out and
smacked him on the side of the head.
THE soft knock on the office door provided Brayden with a
welcome distraction from his attempts at straightening the
mess the police search had made of his office. He had
watched Addison walk off to go God knew where with Micah
and then found himself with nothing to do but worry and
clean. It had been midnight when he finally gave in and
made the call he’d been trying to convince himself he didn’t want to make.
“Come,” he called curtly as he stood up from where he
had been kneeling and gathering several stacks of papers.
The door opened soundlessly and Daniel Grace poked
his head through the door. “You know, midnight summonses
aren’t really in my job description,” he greeted wryly.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Brayden offered softly as he
motioned for Daniel to come in and close the door. He didn’t feel all too badly about calling Daniel at home and asking to meet him. He knew Daniel had been awake. The man never
seemed to sleep, Brayden had found. “I need to know what
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you told those detectives the other day,” he said to Daniel without preamble.
Daniel pursed his lips and looked at Brayden blankly for
so long that it began to make Brayden nervous. Not much
could make Brayden nervous, and certainly not many people could manage the feat. It was one of the reasons he admired Daniel so much. And one of the reasons he often wanted to
smack him.
“I told them the truth,” Daniel finally answered with a
shrug.
Brayden narrowed his eyes in annoyance, but he took a
deep breath to calm himself. The last thing he wanted was to go off half-cocked and start shouting at Daniel now. “What
exactly is the truth?” he asked in exasperation. “I need to know what they were asking, Daniel. What are they looking into?”
“They were asking about the antifreeze,” Daniel told him
with another careless shrug.
Brayden found himself struggling to suppress the
unfamiliar urge to throttle the man.
Daniel, with his uncanny ability to read people, seemed
to sense his inner struggle against the violence and he
smiled slightly, as if he were enjoying frustrating his boss.
The smile dropped suddenly and he was once again serious.
“They were also asking about your brother,” he told Brayden with a hint of unease.
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“My brother?” Brayden asked with a frown. He had
expected that, in a way. Just not quite so soon. “What about him?” he asked with a hard look at Daniel.
Daniel gave another shrug, causing Brayden to growl at
him threateningly. Daniel looked at him for a long moment
and then cocked his head to the side.
“They were asking about his… extracurricular
activities,” he finally answered carefully. “And about his
relationship with your father.”
Brayden licked his lips slowly, frowning at Daniel
thoughtfully. “His relationship,” he repeated.
“You know,” Daniel respon
ded in a low voice. “Did they
get along, what did your dad think of Addison’s sexual
inclinations, had I seen Addison around the storage shed.
That sort of thing,” he rattled off wryly.
Brayden’s jaw tightened. “What did you tell them?” he
finally asked.
Daniel pursed his lips and shrugged yet again. He
continued to meet Brayden’s eyes unerringly when he
answered with, “The truth.”
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IV
THE relentless pounding that woke him was not, as Micah at
first suspected, solely in his head. He rolled gracelessly out of bed, distractedly wondering where in the hell Addison had gone as he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and trudged to the door. The pounding continued, and Micah winced at the
noise as he got closer.
“All right, all right!” he called as he undid the dead bolt with stiff fingers. “Hold on,” he muttered as he pulled the latch and unlocked the last lock.
He opened the door and peered out, only to be met with
two Miami-Dade police detective badges being shown to him.
“Mr. Parrish, we’d like a moment of your time,” one of
the detectives said to him softly.
Micah blinked at them and looked around the little
apartment with a frown. Where had Addison gone? He had
indulged far more than Micah the night before; he should
have still been sprawled in bed and drooling. He was
nowhere to be found, though, and Micah’s apartment wasn’t
big enough for him to be hiding unless he was hanging off
the balcony by his fingernails.
“Yeah, okay,” Micah muttered after a moment. He
pushed the door closed and undid the chain, and then he
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opened the door wider and gestured grudgingly for the two
men to come in.
“I’m Detective Morgan; this is Detective Walker,” the
black detective offered as they entered the apartment. They both looked around the apartment critically as Micah closed the door again. “It’s not a bad time, is it?” Morgan asked
pointedly as he looked over Micah’s barely dressed body and then nodded at the rumpled clothing on the floor and the