Chapter 3

They’re for him.

Those were the first words Dashiell Bucur said to me after we hadn’t seen each other in person for more than ten years. Then he tossed something at me. My cane clattered to the floor as I reflexively lifted both hands to catch it. I felt a brief pang of gratitude that he hadn’t thrown anything harder at my head. I wouldn’t have blamed him.

I looked at the package of Gummi Bears. Dash had never cared for them, so I had to assume that he actually had bought them for me. “Did you know I was coming?”

He shook his head. “No. Not exactly. Just had a feeling I should buy them.”

Of course he did. Dash could argue all he wanted that it was the 8-Ball that was special and not him, but the evidence said otherwise. My main goal in life was to keep that evidence out of the hands of people who would exploit it.

Dash was staring at me like he was seeing a ghost. Hell, he probably would have preferred a ghost. He held that damn 8-Ball in one hand and shook it back and forth in a nervous tell he’d never been able to hide.

I stared back, cataloguing the changes ten years had brought. There were a few, all for the better. The boy I fell in love with had looked damn fine in his Army greens as a twenty-year-old, but both the years and that expensive suit he wore sat well on him. There were no crow’s feet around his dark brown eyes, and his wavy, dark hair was longer on top than I remembered from the past. It hung below his eyebrows, and I wanted to brush it off his forehead.

I wondered what he was thinking as he cataloged the changes in me. I was bigger and bulkier than I’d been. My face was weathered. People were always telling me I looked tired, but that was probably just the exhaustion. My hair was going prematurely gray which would have been kind of sexy if I’d started with dark hair, but I didn’t. All it did was turn my light brown hair dishwater blond.

“Well, thanks.” I shoved the gummy bears in my pocket. Later the bag would join its friends in the candy stash drawer in my office. Sometimes a man needed a sugar rush to make it through the day.

“What are you doing here? And why are you all beat up?” Dash sounded annoyed, as if I’d chosen to get beaten up.

“Someone is trying to kill me.” I picked up my cane and tapped the soft cast on my left foot.

His thick eyebrows raised. “Shocking. I didn’t realize I had to get in line.” He gave me a tight grin with zero humor in it.

Every word I’d practiced since the second after I made the decision to call Dash and throw myself on his mercy fled my mind. I stood there, trapped between the feeling that I’d made a terrible mistake and the certainty that Dash was the only person in the city I could trust.

The facts were simple: I broke his heart all those years ago and then I disappeared. Back then I’d justified my actions by telling myself I was doing it to protect him. That his life would be longer and safer if he stayed away the shitstorm I was getting sucked into against my will. I’d made keeping Dash completely off anyone’s radar a condition of my involvement.

I hadn’t even come close to handling it the best way, but I’d been young and scared of so many things. I’d made the best decision I could with the information and life experience I had at the time. It was all a person could do.

Dash sighed and shifted the ball to his other hand. “Well, thanks for sharing. I’m sorry someone is trying to kill you but rest assured it isn’t me. Not that I haven’t contemplated it over the years, but I decided against it.”

“Thank you. It’s more than I deserve. Please believe me when I say I wouldn’t be here if I had anyone else to turn to.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they’d been the wrong ones. Fuck. I was never good at talking. Dash had always done the talking for both of us.

“Really? Anybody but me, huh? Sounds familiar.”

Dash and I needed to have a long, serious, probably painful talk where I begged for forgiveness. But that could happen after I wasn’t dead. I gave him my best puppy-dog eyes. “Dash. All I meant is, well, this isn’t easy for me either. I’m not trying to hurt you, honest. I need you.”

“Harlan.” He scrubbed his face with his hand. Then he looked up and shook his head. “I can’t do this.” He looked defeated and the words sounded like they’d come from a dark place deep inside of him.

A crash from the other side of the office caught my attention. Shit, I hadn’t even clocked that there was a whole person sitting on top of the desk. Some investigator I was. It was just another sign that my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. I’d only been out of the field two years. You’d think I wouldn’t have lost all my skills. Maybe my head injury had been more serious than the doctors told me.

“Harlan?” The guy turned to Dash. “This is your Harlan? The one you’re?—”

Dash shot him a look, and the guy clammed up. Interesting-looking kid. White-blond hair down past his shoulders, turquoise eyes, slim build. Not Dash’s usual type. Were they a couple? I didn’t get that sense, but you never knew.

Blondie set his laptop on the desk and leaned forward, resting his chin in his hands.

“The one you’re what?” I asked Dash.

“Nothing. Ignore DT. I usually do.” He muttered something I couldn’t hear and then looked at the 8-Ball.

I had a good idea what he was asking, and I held my breath, waiting for the reply. Dash literally held my fate in his hands. If he couldn’t help me, I had a feeling I’d be dead before the end of the week.

Cursing softly, he frowned and shook the ball again. “Are you sure?” From the sigh and slump of his shoulders, I assumed the ball was sure. Dash looked at me and waved me over impatiently. “You’re a fucking mess. Come sit down.” He pointed at an antique couch against one wall.

“Thank you.” I limped to the loveseat, my broken ankle throbbing after climbing three flights of stairs. “Why doesn’t this place have a fucking elevator?” Wait a second. I poked the antique loveseat with my cane. “Isn’t this your godmother’s couch?”

“The one and the same.”

I looked over at Dash. He raised his eyebrows and one side of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. We’d spent some quality time on that loveseat.

Mischief shone in DT’s eyes as he watched us. “Sooooo. Our young Dashiell here has mentioned you once or twice. How long has it been since you’ve seen each other?”

Ten years, two months, and thirteen days. “About ten years.”

“Ten years, two months, and thirteen days.” Dash rested his ass against the desk and stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles, the very picture of a man without a care in the world. “But who’s counting, right?”

Both of us, apparently. I tore my eyes from the long, lean, line of his body and tried to figure out the best way to sit on the loveseat without hurting my ankle and shoulder. When I looked back, Dash had picked up his 8-Ball and was shaking it with one hand. After a quick glance at the ball, annoyance flashed across his Dash’s face, and he sat it on the desk behind him. “So, tell me why you think someone is trying to kill you.”

“Sweet screamin’ Zeus.” DT banged his head on the desk and then looked up. “That’s how you two want to play it? First meeting in ten years, this huge thing between you, and you’re not going to talk about it at all?”

Harlan and I gave identical sighs before exchanging glances. We needed to talk about everything, but time was of the essence here and our issues would have to wait.

Dash looked at me to make the call. Were we going to talk about it now or not? I didn’t want to, so I punted. “Home Depot?”

He sagged in relief. “Home Depot. Which means we’re shelving that discussion for later,” he explained to DT.

The cute guy nodded and unwrapped a candy bar. Was he even old enough to be working? Since it didn’t appear that anyone was going to bring me coffee, and the coffee pot was all the way on the other side of the room, I lifted the travel mug on the side table. “Yours?”

Dash nodded. “Help yourself. Would you like some of my breakfast, too?”

“You brought breakfast?” DT asked hopefully.

“No.”

He wrinkled his nose at Dash, which only served to make him even more adorable. Impressive. Maybe looking adorable was his power. In my last SPAM orientation class, I’d taught a woman who was an optical shapeshifter. When she used her power, rather than seeing her as she was, a person saw whatever type of person they most desired. No two people saw her the same way. If she ever figured out how to change her voice as well, she was going to make an excellent intelligence officer. SPAM had a few decent voice coaches she was working with.

“Not to sound selfish, but this is kind of time sensitive. And frankly, everything hurts. It took me forty-five minutes to drive the seven miles from my place to here. And when I finally reached your office, I ended up having to park so far away, I might as well have walked in the first place. Then I find out there’s no damn elevator, so I had to hobble up three flights of stairs with this stupid boot and cane. And did I mention that someone’s trying to kill me?”

Both Dash and Blondie looked horrified. Good. It was about time they started taking me seriously.

“You drove?” Dash asked. “Why? There’s a Muni stop a block away.”

“That is not the point!” Pinching the bridge of my nose only made the cut on my head hurt more, so I tried deep breathing. Inhale for four, hold for seven, and exhale for eight. Some doctor I’d briefly dated told me it was almost as good as drugs for lowering your blood pressure. I didn’t believe him, but I wanted him to keep sleeping with me, so I pretended to agree. It hadn’t helped then, and it wasn’t doing much now.

Dash and DT exchanged glances.

“Stop looking at each other that way. It’s making me insane.” I took a long drink of coffee and lost track of what I was saying. “Fuck me, this is good coffee.”

“I know, right?” DT agreed.

“Where’d you get it?”

“That’s classified, soldier.” The corners of his mouth tilted up.

I forced the memory of how that mouth had tasted back into the lockbox in my brain. “Asshole.” Banter was good. It gave us some familiarity and some distance at the same time.

My pain ratcheted up again. I leaned back with a sigh and dug through my pockets for the pills I kept stashed there.

Dash’s expression softened and he walked over to me. “Give me your coat.”

“Why?”

“Just give it to me.”

I struggled out of my jacket, wincing as it tugged over my wrist, and handed it over.

Dash folded it over his arm. “DT, can you get me one of the throw pillows from my office and a bottle of water?”

“No, problem, boss.” He tossed of a jaunty salute and hopped off the desk, heading to a wooden door that I assumed led to Dash’s office.

Dash and I watched him leave, giving his perfect bubble of an ass the appreciation it deserved. When the door closed behind him, Dash laid a hand on my shoulder. “Let me help you.”

Oh, god. My breath escaped me in a burst of sound that I would swear on my deathbed wasn’t a sob. I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch. “Let you? I’m here, hat in hand, begging for you to help me.”

He squeezed my shoulder and then patted it. “Come on, sit sideways. Let’s get that leg up.” With gentle touches, he turned me so my back was against the arm of the loveseat, the leg with the boot stretched out in front of me and my bad arm rested along the back of it to take the strain off my shoulder. When DT returned with the pillow, Dash slid it underneath my knee and then opened the water bottle and handed it to me. “Better?”

As long as his hands were on me, I was feeling no pain. “Yes. Thank you.” I didn’t deserve any of his kindness, but I soaked it up like the desert soaked up the rain.

“Now take those pills and then tell us why you think someone is trying to kill you. DT, take notes.”

“Yes, boss.” DT sat in the desk chair this time and flipped open his laptop. “Now, Handsome Harlan, tell me everything about you. About you and Dash, if you want. Spare no details.”

If DT could ask that type of question, then Dash must have told him something about me at some point. Call me selfish, but I liked knowing I’d been on his mind often enough for tell his friend—assistant? business partner?—about us. “DT. What’s it stand for? And how old are you, if you don’t mine me asking?”

Blondie spun the chair a few times before answering. “I mind, but I’ll tell you anyway. Danger Twink. And two-hundred-and-thirty-seven as of May eighteenth.”

“Really?” I looked at Dash for confirmation.

He shrugged. “Danger Twink is new to me. Yesterday it was Dowager Thief. But it was his birthday last month and we bought every birthday candle in the city.”

“How big was the cake?” I tried to picture a cake large enough for 237 candles. The Dash I’d known wouldn’t have had the patience to count them all, let alone stick them on a cake.

“Big.” DT held his hands about two feet apart and then spread them even further.

Maybe he was that old, and maybe he wasn’t. Who was I to question his age? Since joining SPAM, I’d seen more than a few impossible things. An immortal twink barely registered on the weird scale. “Okay, then. Where do you want me to start?”

“Where we always do.” After getting Dash’s attention, DT tossed the 8-Ball to him.

“Good idea.” Dash parked himself on the arm of the loveseat near my feet and gave the ball a shake. “Is someone actively trying to kill Harlan Dean?” He looked into the window and gave a low whistle.

“And?”

“’It is decidedly so’.” Dash looked at me. “Well, fuck.”