Chapter 9

NINE

Aidan woke slowly, noticing first the absence of Jamie's big, warm body draped over his, then detecting the scent of not-hotel-room coffee and... chorizo? He eked open his eyes, unsurprised to find Jamie at the table by the couch, unloading foil-wrapped logs from a paper bag. "Did you get breakfast burritos again?"

Jamie grinned over his shoulder, then stepped around the table and pulled back one of the blackout curtains, leaving only the willowy sheer drape to filter the morning light. "The food truck is right there ," he said, pointing out the window.

Aidan laughed as he pushed himself upright. "You act like you live somewhere that doesn't have food trucks on every corner."

"Fine," he said with a shrug and a smirk. "I'll eat your burrito too."

"Don't you dare." Aidan snagged his sweats off the floor and dragged them on as he stood. He grabbed his phone off the charger, checked for texts and emails, and, seeing none he needed to answer immediately, made a beeline to the bathroom.

When he joined Jamie back at the table, his husband was halfway through his burrito, holding it in one hand and spreading file folders across the table with the other, each folder a different color.

As he bounced on the balls of his feet.

And why had the in-room coffeemaker been in the bathroom?

He glanced past the table at the couch—a Jamie-sized dent in the cushion—then up at his husband again, his eyes caffeine wide and his long caramel-colored top strands more unruly than usual. "How long have you been at it?"

"Since four," Jamie said around a bite. "Couldn't sleep. Then I killed all the coffee pods. So I had to go get us some more this morning. Which fine, fuck yeah, it's holiday blend time." He happy danced where he was standing. "And I needed sticky notes. And then the burritos"—he pointed at the window again—"were right there."

Yep, he was in full-on hacker mode.

"Game prep or the case?" Aidan asked as he claimed the other coffee and took a long sip. Jamie regularly traveled with the rainbow folders he lived and died by for organization, thanks to an agent they'd met in Texas. But if this had been game prep, the folders would be full of printouts. Not scribbled on yellow paper from a legal pad and sticky notes.

"Case," Jamie said, as he shoved the last bite of burrito into his mouth. "I couldn't do nothing."

Aidan was going to ask him to consult, officially, but after the game today. Unsurprisingly, the hacker couldn't wait. Aidan took another sip of coffee, then began peeling back the foil around his burrito. "What've you got?"

"Izzy," he said, nudging the blue folder. "Angel," the green one. "Cortez Family." Yellow. "White." Orange. "Parsons." Red. "We don't have a printer, obviously, and I wasn't going to trust the hotel one, so it's mostly just prelim work for you to follow up on."

"You didn't have to?—"

"I'm going to be tied up most of today with media, practice, the game, then media again. I needed to do something to help." He pitched his cup in the trash can and began moving around the room, changing out of his sweats and into a suit as he talked. "Each of the folders corresponds to a file I set up on our private server. Sticky notes correspond. Everything I couldn't print out."

Aidan slid onto the couch and drew the folders closer, unsure where to start. "Highlights?"

"If you don't strangle Izzy's family, I might."

He pulled the yellow folder closer. "Angel said they cut them off. Right about the time I stopped checking on them."

"I don't think it had anything to do with you." He strode back across the room and handed Aidan his phone. "Just a sample of his uncle's browser history then."

Aidan didn't need to click on the links to know where they led. The names were enough. Right-wing news outlets and podcasts. Homophobic and transphobic talking heads. Evangelical interest groups and mega churches. A fucking conversion camp.

"Fuck." Aidan propped his elbows on the table and scrubbed his hands over his face. "He said you were hot." A throwaway comment yesterday that Aidan hadn't thought the least bit out of the norm, all of his family accepting, most of his friends queer, but his family, blood and found, were the exception.

"I think Izzy cut them off to protect herself and her son." Jamie pushed the blue folder in front of him before turning and continuing to put himself together for the day. "She's doing okay. Works too much but she's never missed a rent payment, has a good credit score, pays for Angel's private school, and is actually starting to save, probably for Angel's college."

"He's got the grades for it?"

"In science and math. Never makes less than an A."

Aidan reached for the green folder, reading over the lines of grades on a stray sheet of legal paper, nothing less than a B- anywhere in the rows.

"Got that from his godfathers, apparently."

Smiling, Aidan shook his head. "Not only. His mom too. Izzy was the only reason I passed geometry." He riffled through the other sheets of paper and notes. He didn't see White's or Parsons's names anywhere, nor the names of any other criminal figures or groups Aidan knew to be associated with cargo theft. "How'd he get tangled up ferrying stolen cargo?"

"That's what I couldn't sort." He swung by to reclaim his phone and pushed the orange and red folders forward. "Angel's got no connection to White or Parsons that I found on first search."

"What about the prior larceny? Angel said he'd been in gen pop before."

Jamie winced, and Aidan knew he wasn't going to like the answer. "He tried to shoplift his mom's wedding ring from the pawn shop she sold it to."

His stomach tumbled the egg, sausage, and coffee in it. " Fuck. Fuck!" He moved to scrub his hands over his face again, but Jamie stopped him, fingers wrapping gently around his wrists.

"Don't go there," he said as he slid onto the couch beside him. "That was three years ago. She's back on her feet now. Angel too, even if he doesn't want you to think that."

He curled his hands around Jamie's, soaking in some of his steadiness while Aidan felt anything but. "What about the truancy and suspensions?"

"He's a queer, Latino kid at a Catholic school. Probably too smart for his grade, so he's bored out of his mind."

"Was it the same for you?"

"I'm white, that's a privilege Angel doesn't have, but make it a small southern town, giant county school, and yeah, I can relate to most of it. If not for the diner and basketball, that could have easily been me." He looped an arm around Aidan's shoulders, giving him more of that steadiness he needed. Aidan was sure Jamie would stay by his side all day if Aidan asked him to, but he'd already done more than expected, especially when there was a whole team depending on him today who needed his steadiness too. He laid a hand on Jamie's thigh. "Thank you for all of this, but you need to get to work."

"I know." Jamie laced their fingers together and gave him a quick kiss. "And so do you. You got enough to go on here?"

He jutted his chin at Angel's file, then at White's and Parsons's. "The thing that doesn't make sense. Angel has no connection to them."

"Exactly." Jamie stood, and, using their joined hands, hauled him up too. "Now go be Agent Talley and solve the case."

"Yes, Coach."

That earned him a swat to the ass and another kiss, this one a little longer, a lot more lingering, before Jamie drew back and held his face in his hands. "You'll get through this. We will. And we'll get Izzy and Angel through it too."