Chapter 5

Deckard pulled over at the curb, relieved to see Perry seemed fine. Too fine. Appetizing. Deckard slapped down his libido. Just because a hot, shirtless young guy waved eagerly at him was no reason for his stupid dick to get excited. He focused on the nasty bruises blooming across Perry's chest and that did the trick.

He leaned over and pushed open the passenger door. "Get in."

Perry slid into the seat and turned to the back where Nix stood wagging her tail. "Hi, Nix! Deckard brought you. That's cool."

"Of course I brought her. We're dealing with a guy who likes bombs. I'm going to check out your room."

"You think there's explosives in my room?" Perry's eyes went wide behind his glasses.

"Probably not. That note says you're supposed to use your powers for good. That's the opposite of a bomb. But I'm not taking any chances."

"Thanks. I appreciate that."

Deckard tapped his phone back to their text thread and eyed the photo. "So who's April?"

"I don't know."

"And SPAM?" He couldn't help snorting. "I tried to Google it and I kept getting spammed by Spam."

Perry scrolled on his phone, doing some kind of search, then shook his head. "I can't find anything about SPAM and superpowers, other than the one guy who could levitate small objects. He did a can of Spam once."

"I'm guessing the note doesn't mean the canned meat this time."

"That would be even weirder than the rest of my life." Perry sighed.

"Okay. We're going to sweep your room for explosives. We'll get that note and bring it in for forensics." Most testing would take time, but they could dust for prints right away. "Then go on from there."

Perry looked happier again. "I do like a man with a plan."

Deckard cleared his throat. "Yes, well. We're also going to find you a shirt ASAP."

Maybe he shouldn't have admitted he'd noticed the expanse of bare skin, but Perry's grin was a reward. "I was looking for one when you told me to get out."

"I do like a man who follows orders without arguing." And oops, that did not improve the innuendo heat situation. Deckard turned away from that appealing grin, exited the vehicle, and shut his door. Perry bounced out of the other side. Deckard frowned at him over the car's roof. "What do you think you're doing?"

"You said, ‘We.'"

"I meant me and Nix."

"Nuh-uh. My room. I'm not letting you snoop around in there without me."

"What do you think I'm going to do? Sniff your underwear?"

Perry's mouth dropped open.

Deckard's face heated. "Forget I said that." He cleared his throat and checked the weapon at his hip. "Okay, I guess as long as you stay behind me, it should be safe. Safe-ish. If I tell you to get out, you get, hear me?"

"Yes, sir!" Perry mock-saluted.

Deckard decided ignoring that was wisest. He opened the rear door, called Nix out, and put her at heel in work mode. Her wagging tail stopped, her ears cocked, and she sniffed the air. "Ready," Deckard told her. He held out a hand to Perry. "Your keys."

"I didn't lock the door. You said not to stop."

"But you usually do?"

"Yeah. The back door and my room too, if I'm out. Mrs. Goshima used not to but she had a couple of weird people wander in, so now we're careful."

"Good. That door there?" He pointed to the overgrown side walkway leading to a couple of steps up.

"Yes."

"Follow me." Deckard led the way, half his attention on the surroundings, the other half watching Nix's behavior. And maybe a small crumb noticing Perry close on his heels. The door at the top of the steps opened inward. He eased it wide, stuck his head in, and had to duck a golf umbrella swinging for his skull.

"Out!" an elderly woman screamed at him, hauling back for another swing. "I called the cops!"

He jumped back, almost knocking Perry off the steps, and grabbed Perry for balance. "I am the cops!"

"Oh?" The woman pulled the door wider and eyed them.

"He really is," Perry said. "I swear."

Deckard realized he was clutching Perry around the waist and let go, straightening his shirt. "Yes, ma'am." He swept a hand down his uniform, then tapped his badge. "Sergeant Deckard, NCPD."

The woman stared at him, then eyed Nix, not lowering the umbrella. "You have a dog with you."

Deckard pointed to Nix's vest. "A police dog."

"Doing what?" Her wrinkled forehead furrowed deeper.

Telling an elderly homeowner they were going to sniff her residence for explosives required tact and finesse.

Until Perry blurted out, "Finding a bomb!"

"A what?"

Deckard elbowed Perry sharply. "No need to get concerned, ma'am. It's purely a precaution. Mr. Crawford here got involved in an incident with explosives at work, and we want to make sure it didn't spill over into his residence."

The woman pierced him with her dark gaze. "You mean he's a suspect and you want to search his room. Do you have a warrant?"

"No, Mrs. Goshima, that's backwards," Perry protested. "He's here to protect us from the bad guys."

Mrs. Goshima reached past Deckard and tapped Perry on the shoulders with the umbrella like a king conferring a knighthood. "You, Peregrine, are simply too innocent to live. Cops don't protect folks like us."

Deckard sputtered. "What do you think we do?"

"Keep the ruling, white, cis, hetero elite in power." She smirked at him.

"There are queer cops, you know."

"Quislings and traitors exist."

Perry shook his head. "I'm going to let Deckard and Nix check my room. If you don't want them to check the rest of the house?—"

"Not without a warrant."

"That's fine, ma'am," Deckard put in. "We won't touch the rest of the house. But if Perry's paying rent, he can allow me in his space."

"Hmph." Mrs. Goshima backed down the hallway just past two side doors and stopped there, the umbrella at rest on her shoulder. "No farther. And my pot's legal. I have a prescription."

"Nix sniffs explosives, not drugs."

"So you say." Although her glare softened as she looked down at Nix who stood head tilted, tail now waving back and forth.

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am." Deckard had been called a lot worse things over the years than the tool of white oppression. A lot less truthful ones, too, although bombs didn't care about your skin color. "Perhaps you'll admit me into your room, Mr. Crawford."

"Sure thing, Sergeant Deckard."

Deckard flicked a finger at Nix to begin her search as they followed Perry into the house. She sniffed the hall, but walked to Perry's door without signaling. Deckard caught Perry's elbow. "Let us go in first." Deckard ignored Mrs. Goshima's comment of "No, don't," and stepped into Perry's room.

The space was small and not very neat. A shirt Deckard recognized as the one Perry had been wearing lay in the middle of the floor. One side of the room held a small fridge and short kitchen counter. Plates were stacked in the sink.

Behind him, Perry said, "If I'd known you were coming over, I'd have tidied up."

"Sh." Deckard told him, keeping an arm across the doorway to bar him out. "Let Nix work."

His dog made a quick, efficient scan of the small space, eventually disappearing under Perry's narrow, unmade bed.

"Not sure what's under there," Perry muttered.

"As long as it's not a bomb, Nix won't care," Deckard told him.

Nix emerged with a rather large dust bunny clinging to one ear and kept going. Deckard focused on her as she paused by the dresser, looking up, but her hesitation was momentary and she kept going without any signal. After two minutes and a full sweep, finding nothing, she returned to sit at his feet.

"Good girl." He dug into his food pouch and fed her a few bits of kibble. She wagged her tail and bounced, eyeing him to see if her toy would come out. He'd have tossed it down the hall, but the woman glaring at him probably wouldn't appreciate it. "Sit," he told her. "Wait." He passed down a couple more bites of food instead, then pulled nitrile gloves out of his pocket and put them on. "All right, Perry, let's see that note."

Perry followed him into the room, pointing at the dresser. "There."

The small square of white paper sat where the picture had shown it. Deckard went over and reread without touching it, but "SPAM" didn't make any more sense in person. "Okay, so how did it get there? I see one door, one window. Is there any other access to this room? An attic hatch, for instance."

"I don't think so," Perry said.

"No hatches in the bedrooms," Mrs. Goshima said from the hall, proving she was listening. They'd need to be discreet.

"Let's see that window." Deckard intercepted Perry's hand as he reached for the latch. "Without touching, please."

They stood side by side, looking at the view of an overgrown back yard and an encroaching bush.

"The window's big enough for an adult to get through," Deckard pointed out.

Mrs. Goshima called, "The law says there must be egress windows. That there is an egress window."

"They'd have to fight the lilac bush," Perry noted.

"We can look for broken branches, and I'll have someone dust the frame for prints." He turned away. "Let's bag the note for evidence, and—" He stopped short. The spot where the note had sat on the dresser was empty. "Where'd it go? Perry, I told you not to touch it."

"Hey! I was standing right here with you."

True enough. "Mrs. Goshima," he called. "We need that note for evidence."

"What note?" She peered into the room.

Deckard eyed her in her baggy trousers and loose slippers, with Nix still sitting in the middle of the doorway. Could she have walked past Nix into the room, up to the dresser, and back out without me noticing? Dex liked to think he had more situational awareness than that. "Well, it can't have vanished. Maybe a breeze blew it off the dresser." Although they hadn't opened the window and he hadn't noticed any wind. Maybe Mrs. Goshima was opening and closing that big-ass umbrella in the hall and made enough airflow to lift the paper.

But no matter how carefully he searched, shining his powerful LED flashlight around the dresser, on the floor, even under the bed— where he emerged with dust bunnies of his own, a crumpled paperback, and an unopened credit card bill— the note was nowhere to be found.

"The paper can't have evaporated into thin air, can it?" Perry shifted from foot to foot.

"The same way it arrived?" Deckard ran a gloved hand over his head, a stupid move transferring more dust to his hair. He yanked off his plastic gloves and balled them in his back pocket. "I don't know. Is there a superpower that involves invisible mail delivery and removal?"

Perry tilted his head. "There are a lot of weird powers out there. What about an invisible person?"

"Unless they were silent and unscented too, Nix would've alerted me." She wasn't a guard dog, but she would warn him of approaching strangers. "They would've had to either pass Mrs. Goshima from behind or come through that side door, and she'd have seen it open."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Mrs. Goshima said. "But that door didn't open."

"I don't like it." Deckard turned in a circle, eyeing the small room. "If they can pop a note in and out, they could do it with incendiaries. Or a stick of dynamite." He imagined a lethal device appearing on that dresser in the dark, counting down… "Pack a bag, Perry. We're moving you somewhere else."

"You're what? Wait, I live here."

Mrs. Goshima hurried past Nix to get in Deckard's face and stamped her foot. "You want to arrest that boy? You go through me first."

Nix whined but stayed put obediently.

"Dammit, I'm not arresting him." Deckard took a step backward. He could've lifted the small elderly woman out of his way, but putting hands on civilians was never a good idea. "I'm finding him a safe place while we decide if he's in danger or not."

Perry said, "You really think there's danger?"

"I think there's a lot of weird going on and it all seems to happen around you. Part of that weird was definitely dangerous." He wondered if they'd analyzed the glitter residue off his car yet. "You don't want to put Mrs. Goshima at risk by staying here, do you?"

"Well, no."

"I survived the disco era," she said. "I'm tough."

Perry turned to her, affection in his voice. "I know you are. But maybe Deckard's right. If I'm not here, I bet SPAM and Fox-Face and the rest will leave the house alone."

His landlady shook her head. "I have no clue what you're talking about. But if you need a lawyer, I know some of the best sharks in the business."

"Thanks." The smile Perry turned on the old woman was sweet and warm and did something funny to the inside of Deckard's chest.

"Come on," he told Perry, speaking gruffly to break the spell. "Pack enough stuff for a few days."

It wasn't until he had Perry beside him in the car, with his duffel bag in the back seat alongside Nix, that Deckard let himself face the question of where he was taking Perry.

"Do you have a safehouse?" Perry asked. "Am I in, like, witness protection?"

"No, and no." Deckard turned on the engine to start the AC but let the car idle at the curb. "The Bomb Squad doesn't do that stuff."

Perry's face fell. "Are you turning me over to Detective Zamora of Major Crimes? I don't think she likes me."

Deckard winced. "Zamora doesn't like anyone."

"She said she wanted to interview me at work tomorrow morning."

"We'll see." Perry had already been vulnerable once on the job. At the same time, Deckard didn't have anything other than a vanishing note as an excuse for interfering.

"I can't afford a hotel," Perry told him. "I'm totally broke. Unless the police are going to pay for it?"

"Ha." Deckard barked a laugh. "No." Well, they might if there was concrete evidence of a threat. A tiny budget existed. But with just that nebulous note and Deckard's probably skewed intuition? He could imagine his boss's face if he put in that budget request.

"So where am I going?"

"Do you have a friend, a relative who'd put you up in secret? Someone who would lie about where you are if asked?"

Perry made a face. "No."

"Come on, there must be someone."

"There's not, all right? I'm really that pathetic. Not one friend with a sofa I can crash on. And relatives?" He wrinkled his nose. "Just no."

"A neighbor, even?" That rang a faint bell in his head. Neighbor? What…? Suddenly the memory that had been nagging at him since they met broke through. His sister's voice. "…babysitting for that little Peregrine kid down the street again. Poor kid seems really lonely and Mrs. Crawford's weird but she pays decent money. Sometimes I want to just kidnap him and bring him home, show him what family's supposed to be…"

"You're Peregrine!" he exclaimed.

"Um, yeah. We established that, like, hours ago?" Perry stared at him.

"No, I mean, my sister knew you. When we were kids. She babysat you. Andrea."

Perry frowned. "I don't remember any Andrea."

"She went by Andy back then."

"Oh, Andy! She sang funny songs and she used to sneak me candy and tell me not to let Mom know. I liked her but then we moved." Perry bit his lip. "That's your sister?"

"Yes. She's a doctor now, working for a nonprofit in Africa." And she made our parents unreservedly proud. Unlike me. He locked away that unworthy bit of jealousy. Andrea was a good person, although eight thousand miles, nine hours of time difference, and busy lives meant they rarely talked.

"Go, Andy."

"Yeah, I'll have to tell her we met up." Andrea had been sad when Peregrine's mom had moved them away, hoping the kid would be okay. "She used to worry about you…"

"Andy was always kind." Perry closed his eyes for a moment. "There's not been many people in my life who gave a shit, you know? And I'm still crappy at making friends. Which is why I've got nowhere to stay."

Deckard gave in to the inevitable that had been lurking in his head ever since he'd seen that note. "You'll stay at my place."

"The hell I will."

"You got a better idea?"

"You got a worse one?" Perry folded his arms and stuck out his chin stubbornly.

Deckard drew a slow, calming breath. "It's only logical." Let me keep you safe, dammit. For Andrea's sake, of course. "I have an alarm, cameras, a very comfortable couch, and Nix."

Perry's pout decreased. "You live with Nix?"

"She's my dog." Well, technically, she was the department's, but she'd argue otherwise and so would he. "Dogs live with their handlers."

"I always wanted a dog." Perry glanced into the back seat. "I kinda love Nix already."

"She's a good girl." Deckard said, "Nix, paw," and when she waved a front foot in the air, he passed a couple of kibbles back for her.

"Well, I guess I could stay. For tonight."

"Gee, sorry I'm trying to save your life." Deckard pulled away from the curb. "I'm pretty easy to live with." He caught Perry hiding a derisive smile that managed to look cute as hell and thought, You, on the other hand, may be torture.