8. Diem

My concerns lifted when Tallus rolled with the punches and didn’t linger on the exchange that had taken place on his couch. I knew what would happen if I came over. My self-control had gone out the window. Tallus had set my blood on fire on day one, and if I didn’t get him out of my system, he would burn me alive. Finding him in a robe, wearing that sultry and inviting smirk, I was done for.

But now that it had happened, I needed, for the sake of my sanity, to draw a line in the sand and forget about it. Maybe the guys on Spark would be more appealing now. Maybe I could return to my regularly scheduled program of drunken forgettable fucks whose names didn’t matter.

Maybe Tallus could stop dominating my every waking moment.

I located my trench coat and retrieved the envelope I’d wedged in the inside pocket earlier. “I have a full breakdown of all the men involved in Aurelian’s bullshit. I have aliases for each of them. Full, fake, government-worthy profiles. It’s no wonder I couldn’t break them down. With Aurelian’s skill at fabricating legitimate new lives for people, I never considered how he’d use those skills within his organization. They have offshore accounts in these bogus names. Millions of dollars in each. What I can’t do yet is link the fake profiles to the real people, even though I know who’s who. My computer skills are good, but your cousin’s are better.”

Tallus sipped wine, hip cocked at a seductive angle, hazel eyes lit with irritation behind his glasses. The guy could be an underwear model with his long, lean frame and over-confident attitude. I needed him to put the robe back on so I could think straight. Even satiated, I was buzzing for more.

“So let me get this straight. You want me to call my ragingly homophobic cousin—and I’m not convinced he’s renounced his old ways no matter what he says and who his friends are—and ask him for help doing research on something that isn’t above board. And you want me to do this at”—he glanced at the clock—“one o’clock in the morning, two days before Christmas.”

“Technically, one day now. It’s after midnight.”

“Not the point, Diem.”

“Yes.”

Tallus drained the wine and reached for the bottle, pouring the remainder into his glass. “And if I can convince him to do illegal research for you, then what?”

“Then I can put these guys away, and Becca can go home.”

Tallus’s body language radiated his feelings on the matter loud and clear. Gone were the flirty undertones. Gone was the excitement to play detective and help me solve a case. Coming over had been a mistake. Fucking him into the couch had been a bigger mistake.

I needed a smoke. I needed gum.

I needed to pulverize a punching bag for an hour.

I needed… something.

“Fine,” Tallus said, freeing me from the swirling storm of thoughts. “But he won’t do it.” Tallus set his wine glass on the bar top and retrieved his phone from the coffee table. He spent a minute typing a message, then paused. “Shit. He’s at a wedding tonight. I can’t message him.”

“Do it anyway.”

“Has anyone ever told you—”

“Yes. All the time. Do it anyway.”

Tallus skewered me with a look.

“Please,” I choked out.

He constructed a message and hit send. “I doubt I’ll get a response.”

Tallus set the phone aside and retrieved his robe—thank god. He didn’t do it up, but less skin exposure was better. He was right. We may not get a response from Ruiz. Not right away. I needed to make excuses and get the hell out of there before things got awkward. As I muddled through a way to sneak out the door and not mention our recent activities, his phone pinged with an incoming text.

We both looked at the device, and Tallus crossed toward it. “Guess I was wrong.” When he opened the message, he flinched and made a face. “Good grief.”

“What?”

Turning the phone, he showed me the picture Ruiz had sent. He and Valor were dressed to the nines, and Ruiz was licking Valor’s cheek. The pair were obviously drunk off their asses. I knew Ruiz and his reputation in the department, or rather, the reputation he’d had several years ago when I worked there.

The picture on display defied all those homophobic notions.

I pointed at the phone. “Is he?”

“No, he didn’t have a recent awakening and discover he was gay. Valor married some guy from homicide today. Ruiz was his best man. I guess they’re… friends? I don’t know. I’m still processing it.”

“Who in homicide?”

“A guy named Doyle. You know him?

“No shit. Yeah, I know him.” Another guy with a well-known reputation. A lot had changed, it seemed.

“Hang on.” Tallus typed a response. “I’ll tell him to touch base with me tomorrow.”

It was the best we could do. If Ruiz agreed to help, we could put this case to bed, and I could return to the mundane life I was used to. Cheating spouses. Underhanded bosses. Surveillance. Research. The boring shit that didn’t take more than two brain cells to work out.

Tallus tossed the phone aside and perched his hands on his hips, sizing me up and down. “It’s late, and I’m halfway drunk myself. I think you should go.”

I grunted in the affirmative, relieved he wasn’t going to make it a thing. Good. Maybe caving to his raw sexual energy wasn’t going to bite me in the ass after all.

I found my coat and shoved my feet into my boots.

As I reached for the doorknob, Tallus spoke. “Hey, D?”

Shit. I paused, closed my eyes, and breathed evenly as I waited for him to continue.

“I’m all about a bit of fun from time to time, but you should know I’m not looking for serious. In case you had it in your head that—”

“It won’t happen again.”

“That’s not what I was—”

“It won’t happen again,” I reiterated, then I was out the door, slamming it behind me.

Halfway down the hall, I cursed, pivoted, and returned to the door, rapping gently with a knuckle.

He pulled it open and pinned me with a look I’d never seen on his face before.

“Did I hurt you?”

He flinched. The question seemed to be the last thing he expected. “What? You mean in there when we…?”

I grunted.

Tallus chuckled. “No. I might have suffered from frostbite but that would be the extent of it.”

It took me a second to gather his meaning, and I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. I wasn’t good at this. “Okay. I just… I know how I come across, and… I would never purposefully… I mean… I don’t go around…” I growled with frustration.

“I think I get it.”

“You don’t… but thanks for trying. Good night, Tallus.”

“Good night.”

I walked away, but his next words stopped me in my tracks.

“Would it have killed you to touch me?”

The tsunami in my chest wanted to rip me apart and destroy me. I held tight to control, riding the painful waves of vulnerability and not letting anything show on my face as I turned around. Tallus had a way of flaying me open.

“I wanted to.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I wanted to, and it’s because I wanted to that I couldn’t.”

He wouldn’t understand, and I left him there alone in the doorway as I headed to the elevator more sure than ever that I could never chance anything with Tallus again.

***

Tallus called the following afternoon, informing me Ruiz would meet with us at four, but his time was limited, and didn’t we realize it was Christmas Eve?

I drove to the Starbucks a few blocks from the police headquarters building where Ruiz said he would be waiting.

Part of my job required me to work cooperatively with the department. Since I’d left on bad terms, it was my least favorite thing to do. Like Ruiz and Doyle, I too had a reputation. Whereas Ruiz and Doyle seemed to have overcome or changed their unsavory ways, I was still the same reactive, emotionally stunted asshole no one wanted to deal with.

I was trying to change.

Dr. Peterson had told me it was a process and not to expect results overnight. My brain was hardwired to respond one way and one way only. Creating new pathways and learning to use them was a nightmarish challenge. I had to be constantly aware of my feelings and emotions, and who the fuck wanted that?

Miraculously, I found parking on the side of the road and finished my cigarette. I’d run out of gum the previous night and hadn’t bothered grabbing more. After caving and breaking my personal rule with Tallus, I’d decided to quit smoking after Christmas. My gift to myself was a few days of less stress and better anger management via full doses of nicotine whenever I wanted.

Dr. Peterson didn’t like that I was trying to make too many changes at once anyhow. He believed I should prioritize my goals and work on them one at a time. So la-di-da, I was smoking on doctor’s orders.

Ruiz and Tallus were seated at a far table at the edge of my line of sight. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but their body language was strained. Neither of them said much. Tallus checked his phone repeatedly, so I knew I was late.

When I finished my cigarette, I gave myself a quick pep talk, reminding myself I needed to play the nice guy card with Ruiz if I wanted his help. No growling, grumping, swearing, or yelling.

Playing nice did not come naturally.

I bought a coffee and found a seat beside Tallus, facing Ruiz. On closer inspection, the department’s IT specialist looked like shit.

“I’m seriously hungover. Use small words, a soft voice, and give me extra processing time to respond. I drank far too much last night and did things I will never live down.”

Tallus set his phone on the table, the image of Ruiz licking Valor’s face on the screen. “Like this?”

Ruiz groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Yes. That would be it.” But his shoulders bounced with quiet laughter. “What a fucking blast,” he said when he sat upright again. “But I hurt.”

Sobering, Ruiz glanced between us, but his attention settled on Tallus. “Does this meeting mean you forgive me?”

“I’m trying.”

Ruiz nodded and drank from a paper cup but cringed when he set it down. “Nope. Still too queasy, even for coffee.” It was then he took me in. “How’s it going, Krause?”

I grunted, then remembered I was supposed to use words and be amicable, and added, “Good. Been a while.”

“Sure has. Staying out of trouble?”

“Trying.”

Ruiz nodded and leaned back in his seat, groaning as he did so. “Talk. Tell me why I dragged my sorry ass out of bed.”

“It’s afternoon,” Tallus said.

“And I didn’t go to bed until five a.m.” He rolled a hand, urging us to spit it out.

Tallus looked at me, and I laid the folder of information I’d gathered on the table. “This is classified.”

“Okay.”

“What I’m going to tell you, can’t leave this table.”

“Yeah, yeah. Got it.”

“I’m serious.”

“I said, got it. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“I have a client whose life is in danger, and at present, the department thinks she’s a missing person. She’s not. I have her in hiding, and this is why.” I opened the folder.

It took over forty minutes to get Ruiz caught up. By the time I finished, he seemed to have forgotten about his hangover and was prowling the folder of information I’d gathered on Aurelian like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Fuck me. Holy shit. He was right. Valor knew this guy was dirty, but we had no grounds to dig deeper. You can’t ride a hunch or a bad feeling when there’s no fucking proof. Holy hell.”

“Technically, you still don’t have grounds for a warrant. Everything I’ve gathered was done so in a… creative fashion, but…”

“But if I can make these connections and prove the aliases belong to these men, we can find a way to expose them.”

“Exactly. And I already know how.”

Tallus and Ruiz both looked at me. “You uncover what I need, and I’ll hand it over to Becca. I’ll escort her into the station, and she can hand it over to the cops. They won’t care how she got it. It will be juicy enough for an investigation. She can say it took time to get it all in order, hence why she’s been hiding for so long. They’ll keep her safe—seeing the threat on paper—and take care of these scoundrels. The path to their arrest will be impossible not to follow. The question is, are you willing to do some dirty work for me?”

Since I was used to having to pay people off, I slid a fifty across the table.

Tallus huffed and shoved it back toward me. “He’ll help without a bribe.”

“I will?” Ruiz narrowed his eyes at his cousin. “I could lose my job for this.”

“You won’t, and you know it. You’re too good to get caught. Besides…” Tallus adopted a cocky smirk. “Family helps family, and we’re family, aren’t we?”

Ruiz held Tallus’s gaze a long time before shifting his attention to me. “All right. Deal.” He pulled out his phone and snapped pictures of specific information from the file—I wasn’t willing to part with it—then shoved back from the table. “I’ll need a few days. I can’t do this today or tomorrow because of Christmas. My wife would kill me, and I plan to spend quality time with my kids over the holiday. I’ll sit with it sometime next week.” He scrubbed his unshaven chin. “Give me until the new year. I’ll text Tallus when I have it done.”

I thanked him, and Ruiz took off, leaving me alone with Tallus, slowly sipping a second latte and nibbling a peanut butter cookie.

“Plans today?” he asked.

I grunted in the negative. He didn’t ask me to elaborate. This was why I had rules. I didn’t like awkwardness any more than I liked getting personal.

Tallus finished his cookie and brushed the crumbs from his fingers before shoving the unfinished drink away and turning to face me.

I couldn’t look at him and scanned the coffee shop instead, body unyielding and tense.

“Wanna come over for a drink and another round?”

“No.”

“I figured. Just checking. Want me to pretend it never happened?”

I grunted, nodding for emphasis, determined to get my point across.

He huffed a humorless laugh. “I hear you loud and clear despite your lack of words.” Tallus stood and rapped his knuckles on the table. “I’ll let you know when Costa messages me.”

I watched Tallus leave, taking in his expressive, confident walk and wishing, for one day, I could be someone else.