Summary:
Special Agents for the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt have been partners and best friends for three years, but everything changed the night Taylor admitted the truth about his feelings for Will. And when Taylor was shot a few hours later, Will felt his reluctance to get involved was vindicated. For Will, the team and the friendship have to come first--despite the fact that he hasn't failed to notice just how...hot Taylor is.
Taylor has been in love with his partner and best friend since they were first partnered. There isn't much he wouldn't do for Will--but he doesn't know how much longer they can stay teamed feeling the way he does. Still, he agreed to a camping trip in the High Sierras--despite the fact that he hates camping--because Will wanted a chance to save their partnership.
But the trip is a disaster from the first, and things rapidly go from bad to worse when they find a crashed plane and a couple of million dollars in stolen money. With a trio of murderous robbers trailing them, Will and Taylor are on dangerous ground, fighting for their partnership, their passion...and their lives.
Summary:
Someone from DSS Special Agent Taylor MacAllister’s past -- the past he doesn’t discuss with his partner and now-lover Will Brandt -- wants him scared. Dead scared. Or maybe just dead. Will fears the past will end a future romance. Or any future at all.
Summary:
Special Agents for the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt have been partners forever and lovers for three months, but their new relationship is threatened when Will is offered a plum two-year assignment in Paris.
Will believes the posting only means postponing what they both want. Taylor fears that kind of separation will mean the end of their new and still-fragile relationship.
It's a bad time to find themselves in the middle of the New Mexico wilderness responsible for the health and welfare of a suspected terrorist. Especially when everyone else they run into seems determined to see their prisoner -- and them -- dead.
Summary:
The boys are back in town -- and Paris is burning!
For Special Agents of the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt, the strain of a long distance relationship is beginning to tell after eleven months of separation. A romantic holiday could be just the thing to bridge the ever-growing distance, but when Taylor spots a terrorist from the 70s, long believed dead but very much alive, it's c'est la vie.
Now instead of sipping wine and seeing the sights, the boys are chasing a wily and deadly foe through the graveyards and catacombs of Paris.
Of course, it could always be worse -- and soon it is.
Summary:
Will is finally braced to bring Taylor home to meet the folks. Unfortunately, not every member of the Brandt clan loves Taylor the way Will does. Then again, not everyone loves the Brandts. In fact, someone has a score to settle -- and too bad for any former DS agents who get in the way when the bullets start to fly.
Summary:
The boys are back in town!
With resources already overstretched, the last thing Will and Taylor need is another client.
And the last thing Will needs is for that client to turn out to be an old boyfriend of Taylor’s.
But Ashe Dekker believes someone is trying to kill him, and Taylor is determined to help--whatever the cost.
Complete Series
Summary:
Dangerous Ground
Special Agents for the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt have been partners and best friends for three years, but everything changed the night Taylor admitted his feelings for Will. Yeah, it's complicated...
Old Poison
Friends, partners, and now lovers. If it was complicated before, it's even trickier now that Will has been assigned a case which guarantees he'll be working side-by-side with ex-boyfriend David Bradley.
Blood Heat
It's a bad time for DSS Agents Brandt and MacAllister to find themselves stranded in the middle of the New Mexico wilderness responsible for the health and welfare of a suspected terrorist. In other words, another day at the office.
Dead Run
The strain of a long distance relationship is beginning to tell after eleven months of Will being posted in Paris. A romantic holiday in the City of Lights could be just the thing to bridge the ever-growing distance--if it doesn't kill them first.
Kick Start
Will is finally braced to bring Taylor home to meet the folks. Unfortunately, not every member of the Brandt clan loves Taylor the way Will does. Then again, not everyone loves the Brandts.
Blind Side
With resources already overstretched, the last thing Will and Taylor need is another client. And the last thing Will needs is for that client to turn out to be an old boyfriend of Taylor's.
Original Review September 2013:
Good tale of 2 partners/best buds who after 3 years begin to realize that maybe there's even more to the connection than work and friendship. Will and Taylor are both likable and frustrating at the same time as they stumble onto a crime scene on their camping trip.
Old Poison #2
Original Review September 2013:
This next installment of the Dangerous Ground series is even better than the first. We see Will and Taylor's relationship move forward, both personally and professionally. We also learn a little bit about Taylor's past in Japan. Well written characters and plot, definitely one to add to your list.
Blood Heat #3
Original Review September 2013:
I never thought it possible to pack so much into such a relatively small book. Once again, there's mystery, drama, action, and of course tons of Will and Taylor.
Dead Run #4
Original Review September 2013:
Another good entry in the Dangerous Ground series.
Kick Start #5
Original Review December 2013:
Another great entry in the series. Loved seeing Will in his hometown family element, even with the ups and downs. I truly enjoyed the build-up for the next entry, whenever that will be. I haven't been disappointed yet by this author.
Blind Side #6
Original Review June 2020:
I want to start out by saying that Will and Taylor fans have been waiting for years for this final installment of their journey and as hard as that was and disappointing when it wasn't happening, I will never fault an author for the delay. An author who writes a story for the sake of the reader's timeline will never do the story and especially the characters justice. An author who listens to the characters and waits until they are ready to let the author in on their latest adventure is an author who will always care about their work and creations, that author will always be tops in my book. Well Josh Lanyon waited and waited and waited until Will and Taylor were finally ready to let her in and she did not disappoint.
Their business is finally getting some headway when in walks Taylor's ex with a favor to ask. Will is not a happy camper. I can't blame him really nor can I blame Taylor for wanting to help his ex, the biggest problem is timing, or so it seems. Will smells something fishy with Ashe Dekker's story and makes no qualms about letting Taylor in on his opinion. Is it a case of Will being jealous? Is it a case of timing with a big new client? Well you know my answer to those questions: you have to read for yourself for the answers😉.
Some might think that Taylor is a little off his game, a little "not so on the ball" with his reactions to certain aspects of the story(I don't want to give particulars as that would be spoiling and as you know I don't do that). Maybe that's true but when you are dealing with an old friend, or ex in this case, your thought pattern and reactions are flooded with emotions as well and suddenly that playbook you've always reacted to isn't so clear. I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel the points that some might call out of character as being completely in character keeping with the scenarios. However you look at it, I loved seeing the boys back for one last hurrah! But as we know Josh Lanyon is a brilliant Christmas Coda deliverer so I doubt this will really be the last time we see Will and Taylor😉😉.
If you've been waiting for Blind Side to begin Dangerous Ground well now you can start Will and Taylor's journey because Blind Side was the finale to this lovely series. If you've been a fan of Dangerous Ground and been waiting for this book, now you can see how the boys are doing. I highly recommend doing a re-read/listen before starting Blind but reliving Will & Taylor's adventures is never a bad thing in my opinion. If you aren't usually a re-reader you might still want to do so just because it has been some years since we last heard from them.
Overall Series Review
Original 1st Re-Read July 2015:
This is an overall review for the series. I have a special place in my heart for this series. It was the fourth series in the M/M genre that I read and it was the second thing by Josh Lanyon that I read. Simply put, I never looked back. Not only did it solidify my love for the genre but it cemented my ongoing love affair with the writings of Miss Lanyon. Will and Taylor are perfect for each other, as partners, friends, and lovers although there are times when it doesn't always seem like it. The characters are intriguing, the mysteries they find themselves facing are captivating, and the overall writing had me mesmerized from the very beginning. A definite must to your library.
3rd Re-Read Review June 2020:
As I said previously, Dangerous Ground was the second Josh Lanyon reading after her Adrien English series and I absolutely loved Will and Taylor. Equals, friends, partners, lovers. They truly are everything to each other, throw in the job and the cases(mysteries as they tend to find trouble even on vacation) and it's just all around brilliant storytelling. I may not re-read this series as often as my annual revisit of her Adrien English series, I will never tire of Will & Taylor. They are captivating, mesmerizing, intriguing, and just plain wonderfully fun even when the danger is high and they aren't necessarily on the same page they still have each other in mind. As I said, I will never tire of Will Brandt and Taylor MacAllister and their brilliant journey.
Dangerous Ground #1
Will was tired. Pleasantly tired. Taylor was exhausted. Not that he’d admit it, but Will could tell by the way he dropped down by the campfire while Will finished pitching their two-man tent.
One eye on Taylor, Will stowed their sleeping bags inside the Eureka Apex XT. He pulled Taylor’s Therm-a-Rest sleeping pad out of his own backpack where he’d managed to stash it that morning without Taylor noticing, and spread it out on the floor of the tent. He opened the valve and left the pad inflating while he went to join Taylor at the fire.
“Hungry?”
“Always.” Taylor’s grin was wry — and so was Will’s meeting it. Taylor ate like a horse — even in the hospital — although where he put it was anyone’s guess. He was all whippy muscle and fine bones that seemed to be made out of titanium. It was easy to look at him and dismiss him as a threat, but anyone who’d ever tangled with him didn’t make that mistake twice.
He was too thin now, though, which was why Will was carrying about three pounds more food in his pack than they probably needed. He watched Taylor feeding wood into the flames. In the firelight his face was all sharps and angles. His eyes looked almost black with fatigue — they weren’t black, though, they were a kind of burnished green — an indefinable shade of bronze that reminded Will of old armor. Very striking with his black hair — Will’s gaze lingered on Taylor’s hair, on that odd single streak of silver since the shooting.
He didn’t want to think about the shooting. Didn’t want to think about finding Taylor in a dingy storeroom with his shirt and blazer soaked in blood — Taylor struggling for each anguished breath. He still had nightmares about that.
He said, talking himself away from the memory, “Well, monsieur, tonight zee specials are zee beef stroganoff, zee Mexican-style chicken, or zee lasagna with meat sauce.”
“What won’t they freeze-dry next?” Taylor marveled.
“Nothing. You name it, they’ll freeze-dry it. We’ve got Neapolitan ice cream for dessert.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Just like the astronauts eat.”
“We pay astronauts to sit around drinking Tang and eating freeze-dried ice cream?”
“Your tax dollars at work.” Will’s eyes assessed Taylor. “Here.” He shifted, pulled his flask out of his hip pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Taylor. “Before dinner cocktails.”
“Cheers.” Taylor took a swig and shuddered.
“Hey,” Will protested. “That’s Sam Houston bourbon. You know how hard that it is to find?”
“Yeah, I know. I bought you a bottle for Christmas year before last.”
“That’s right. Then you know just how good this is.”
“Not if you don’t like it.” But Taylor was smiling — which was good to see. Not too many smiles between them since that last night at Will’s apartment. And he wanted to think about that even less than he wanted to think about Taylor getting shot.
“Son, that bourbon will put hair on your chest,” he said.
“Yeah, well, unlike you I prefer my bears in the woods.”
There was a brief uncomfortable pause while they both remembered a certain naval officer, and then Taylor took another swig and handed the flask back to Will.
“Thanks.”
Will grunted acknowledgment.
He thought about telling Taylor he hadn’t seen Bradley since that god-awful night, but that was liable to make things worse — it would certainly confuse the issue, because regardless of what Taylor believed, the issue had never been Lieutenant Commander David Bradley.
Taylor put a hand to the small of his back, arching a little, wincing — and Will watched him, chewing the inside of his cheek, thinking it over. It was taking a while to get back into sync, that was all. It was just going to take a little time. Sure, Taylor was moody, a little distant, but he still wasn’t 100 percent.
He was getting there, though. Getting there fast — because once Taylor put his mind to a thing, it was as good as done. Usually. When he started back at work he’d be stuck on desk duty for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so, but he’d be back in the field before long, and Will was counting the days. He missed Taylor like he’d miss his right arm. Maybe more.
Even now he was afraid — but there was no point thinking like that. They were okay. They just needed time to work through it. And the best way to do that was to leave the past alone.
“Warm enough?” he asked.
Taylor gave him a long, unfriendly look.
“Hey, just asking.” Will rose. “I was going to get a sweater out of my bag for myself.”
Taylor relaxed. “Yeah. Can you grab my fleece vest?”
Will nodded, and passing Taylor, took a swipe at the back of his head, which Taylor neatly ducked.
They had instant black bean soup and the Mexican-style chicken for dinner, and followed it up with the freeze-dried ice cream and coffee.
“It’s not bad,” Taylor offered, breaking off a piece of ice cream and popping it into his mouth.
Actually the ice cream wasn’t that bad. It crunched when you put it into your mouth, then dissolved immediately, but Will said, “What do you know? You’ll eat anything. If I didn’t watch out you’d be eating poison mushrooms or poison berries or poison oak.”
Taylor grinned. It was true; he was a city boy through and through. Will was the outdoors guy. He was the one who thought a week of camping and hiking was what they needed to get back on track; Taylor was humoring him by coming along on this trip. In fact, Will was still a little surprised Taylor had agreed. Taylor’s idea of vacation time well spent was on the water and in the sun: renting a house boat — like they had last summer — or deep sea fishing — which Taylor had done on his own the year before.
“They never did arrest anyone in connection with that heist, did they?” Taylor said thoughtfully, after a few more minutes of companionable chewing.
“What heist?”
Taylor threw him an impatient look. “The robbery at the Black Wolf Casino.”
“Oh. Not that I heard. I wasn’t really following it.” Taylor had a brain like a computer when it came to crimes and unsolved mysteries. When Will wasn’t working, which, granted, was rarely, the last thing he wanted to do was think about crooks and crime — especially the ones that had nothing to do with them.
But Taylor was shaking his head like Will was truly a lost cause, so he volunteered, “There was something about the croupier, right? She was questioned a couple of times.”
“Yeah. Questioned but never charged.” He shivered.
Will frowned. “You all right?”
“Jesus, Brandt, will you give it a fucking rest!” And just like that, Taylor was unsmiling, stone-faced and hostile.
There was a short, sharp silence. “Christ, you can be an unpleasant bastard,” Will said finally, evenly. He threw the last of his foil-wrapped ice cream into the fire, and the flames jumped, sparks shooting up with bits of blackened metal.
Taylor said tersely, “You want a more pleasant bastard for a partner, say the word.”
The instant aggression caught Will off guard. Where the hell had it come from? “No, I don’t want someone more pleasant,” he said. “I don’t want a new partner.”
Taylor stared at the fire. “Maybe I do,” he said quietly.
Will stared at him. He felt like he’d been sucker punched. Dopey and…off-kilter.
“Why’d you say that?” he asked finally into the raw silence between them.
He saw Taylor’s throat move, saw him swallowing hard, and he understood that although Taylor had spoken on impulse, he meant it — and that he was absorbing that truth even as Will was.
“We’re good together,” Will said, not giving Taylor time to answer — afraid that if Taylor put it into words they wouldn’t be able to go back from it. “We’re…the best. Partners and friends.”
He realized he was gripping his coffee cup so hard he was about to snap the plastic handle.
Taylor said, his voice low but steady, “Yeah. We are. But…it might be better for both of us if we were reteamed.”
“Better for you, you mean?”
Taylor met his eyes. “Yeah. Better for me.”
And now Will was getting angry. It took him a moment to recognize the symptoms because he wasn’t a guy who got mad easily or often — and never at Taylor. Exasperated, maybe. Disapproving sometimes, yeah. But angry? Not with Taylor. Not even for getting himself shot like a goddamned wet-behind-the-ears recruit. But that prickling flush beneath his skin, that pounding in his temples, that rush of adrenaline — that was anger. And it was all for Taylor.
Will threw his cup away and stood up — aware that Taylor tensed. Which made him even madder — and Will was plenty mad already. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “This is payback. This is you getting your own back — holding the partnership hostage to your hurt ego. This is all because I won’t sleep with you, isn’t it? That’s what it’s really about.”
And Taylor said in that same infuriatingly even tone, “If that’s what you want to think, go ahead.”
Right. Taylor — the guy who jumped first and thought second, if at all; who couldn’t stop shooting his mouth off if his life depended on it; who thought three months equaled the love of a lifetime — suddenly he was Mr. Cool and Reasonable. What a goddamn laugh. Mr. Wounded Dignity sitting there staring at Will with those wide, bleak eyes.
“What am I supposed to think?” Will asked, and it took effort to keep his voice as level as Taylor’s. “That you’re in love? We both know what this is about, and it ain’t love, buddy boy. You just can’t handle the fact that anyone could turn you down.”
“Fuck you,” Taylor said, abandoning the cool and reasonable thing.
“My point exactly,” Will shot back. “And you know what? Fine. If that’s what I have to do to hold this team together, fine. Let’s fuck. Let’s get it out of the way once and for all. If that’s your price, then okay. I’m more than willing to take one for the team — or am I supposed to do you? Whichever is fine by me because unlike you, MacAllister, I —”
With an inarticulate sound, Taylor launched himself at Will, and Will, unprepared, fell back over the log he’d been sitting on, head ringing from Taylor’s fist connecting with his jaw. This was rage, not passion, although for one bewildered instant Will’s body processed the feel of Taylor’s hard, thin, muscular length landing on top of his own body as a good thing — a very good thing.
This was followed by the very bad thing of Taylor trying to knee him in the guts — which sent a new and clearer message to Will’s mind and body.
And there was nothing Will would have loved more than to let go and pulverize Taylor, to take him apart, piece by piece, but he didn’t forget for an instant — even if Taylor did — how physically vulnerable Taylor still was; so his efforts went into keeping Taylor from injuring himself — which was not easy to do wriggling and rolling around on the uneven ground. Even at 75 percent, Taylor was a significant threat, and Will took a few hits before he managed to wind his arms around the other man’s torso, yanking him into a sitting position facing Will, and immobilizing him in a butterfly lock.
Taylor tried a couple of heaves, but he had tired fast. Will was the better wrestler anyway, being taller, broader, and heavier. Taylor relied on speed and surprise; he went in for all kinds of esoteric martial arts, which was fine unless someone like Will got him on the ground. Taylor was usually too smart to let that happen, which just went to show how furious he was.
Will could feel that fury still shaking Taylor — locked in this ugly parody of a lover’s embrace. He shook with exhaustion too, breath shuddering in his lungs as he panted into Will’s shoulder. His wind was shit these days, his heart banging frantically against Will’s. These marks of physical distress undermined Will’s own anger, reminding him how recently he had almost lost Taylor for good.
Taylor’s moist breath against Will’s ear was sending a confusingly erotic message, his body hot and sweaty — but Christ, he was thin. Will could feel — could practically count — ribs, the hard links of spine, the ridges of scapula in Taylor’s fleshless back. And it scared him; his hold changed instinctively from lock to hug.
“You crazy bastard,” he muttered into Taylor’s hair.
Taylor struggled again, and this time Will let him go. Taylor got up, not looking at Will, not speaking, walking unsteadily, but with a peculiar dignity, over to the tent.
Watching him, Will opened his mouth, then shut it. Why the hell would he apologize? Taylor had jumped him. He watched, scowling, as Taylor crawled inside the tent, rolled out his sleeping bag onto the air mattress Will had remembered to set up for him, pulled his boots off, and climbed into the bag, pulling the flap over his head — like something going back into its shell.
This is stupid, Will thought. We neither of us want this. But what he said was, “Sweet dreams to you too.”
Taylor said nothing.
Old Poison #2
Will parked behind Taylor’s silver Acura MDX in the narrow side driveway and got out of his own Toyota Land Cruiser. Evenings were damp this close to the beach. The air smelled of salt and old seaweed -- corrupt yet invigorating.
He let Riley out of the passenger side of the SUV. Riley trotted down the driveway to the large, overgrown backyard, barking a warning to the neighborhood cats.
Will slid the gate shut. The house was an original Craftsman bungalow. It had been in terrible shape when Taylor bought it two years previously. Actually, it was still in terrible shape, but Taylor was renovating it, one room at a time, in his spare hours.
Will got his duffel bag of the backseat and the heavy, blue-and-gold-wrapped birthday present. He felt self-conscious about that present; he’d spent a lot of time and a fair amount of money on Taylor this year.
Hard to forget that Taylor nearly hadn’t lived to see this birthday.
Speak of the devil. The side door opened, and Taylor came down the steps, an unguarded grin breaking the remote beauty of his face. There was a funny catch in Will’s throat as he saw him alive and strong and smiling again.
“How was traffic?”
Will opened his mouth, but the next instant Taylor was in his arms, his mouth covering Will’s in unaffected hunger. They were safe here. The cinder-block wall was high, and the bougainvillea draping over the edge of the roof neatly blocked out the view of this driveway from the street.
“Man, I missed you,” Taylor said when they surfaced for air.
“You saw me this morning.”
“For three minutes in front of Varga, Jabowitz, and Cooper. It’s not the same.”
“No,” agreed Will, “it’s not the same.” His gaze rested on Taylor’s face; his heart seemed to swell with a quiet joy. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” Taylor’s smile widened. “Hey, I got your card.”
“Oh.” Will was a little embarrassed about that card. To My Sweetheart or whatever it said. Kind of over-the-top. He’d bought it on impulse. Taylor was smiling, though, and with no sign of mockery, so maybe it was okay.
“Is that for me?” Taylor asked as Will retrieved the tote bag and parcel he’d dropped when Taylor landed in his arms.
“Nah. I’m heading over to another party after I get done here.” Will shoved the blue-and-gold present into his hands. “Yes, it’s for you.”
“Okay if I open it now?”
“You’re the most impatient guy I ever met.” Will was amused, though.
“Hey, I waited three years for you,” Taylor threw over his shoulder, heading up the stairs into the house.
“Yeah, remind me again how you whiled away the hours in that lonely monastery as you waited?”
Taylor’s chuckle drifted back.
Will heeled the side door shut and followed Taylor through the mud porch and into the kitchen.
This was one of the first rooms Taylor had renovated: a cozy breakfast nook with built-in window benches, gleaming mahogany cabinets and drawers with patinated copper fixtures, green granite counters, and gray-green slate floor. The numerous cabinets were well designed and well organized. The care and priority given the kitchen might have deceived someone into thinking cooking played a role in Taylor’s life. In fact, the kitchen had been designed to please Will -- the only person who had ever cooked a meal in that house.
There was a German chocolate cake on the table in the breakfast nook. Will’s card was propped next to it with a couple of others: To Our Son, To My Son, To My Brother, What is a Brother? Happy Birthday, Uncle. Greetings from the whole tribe. To the side of these was a wine bottle-shaped science experiment gone awry.
“What the hell is that?” Will peered more closely at the pickled contents of the wine bottle. What it was, was a fucking cobra. The cobra stared back sightlessly at him, fangs bared.
“It’s my snake. I’ve been waiting all day to show it to you.” Taylor wiggled his eyebrows salaciously.
“Funny,” said Will, glancing at him. “Where did you get it?”
“It came in the mail.”
“Who sent it?”
Taylor shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“The card must have got lost.”
They both studied the bottle.
“What is the liquid?”
“Rice wine.”
“Is it poison?”
“It’s not supposed to be. In fact, it’s supposed to be a cure-all -- and an aphrodisiac.”
“I bet bourbon works just as well, and you don’t have that nasty cobra aftertaste.”
Taylor’s smile was preoccupied. Will gave him a closer look.
“You don’t have any idea who would have sent something like this?”
Taylor shook his head. Will laughed and threw an arm around his wide, bony shoulders.
“Spooked?”
“Nah.” But Taylor’s brows were drawn together as he continued to gaze at the bottle. “Weird, though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Taylor had some weird friends. And weirder acquaintances. He had been in the DS longer than Will, signing on right out of college, and he’d been posted to Tokyo, Afghanistan, and briefly, Haiti. The next time he was posted overseas it would be as a regional security officer responsible for managing security operations for an embassy or for a number of diplomatic posts within an assigned area. That was one reason Will was hesitant to move in with him. Not a lot of point in setting up house when one or both of them could be stationed overseas within a year or so.
Taylor didn’t see it this way, of course. Taylor’s idea was they should move in together immediately and they’d deal with the threat of a future separation when -- if -- it happened. He’d always had a tendency to leave tomorrow to take care of itself, but getting shot had cemented his determination to live every day as though it were his last.
Will understood that. He even agreed with it, in principle, but what happened to him when Taylor was posted overseas for three-or-so years? Things weren’t as simple as Taylor liked to pretend.
He glanced at Taylor’s profile. He was frowning, and Will did not want him frowning on his birthday.
“Hey,” he said softly. Taylor’s head turned his way. “Want to open your present?”
“Sure.” Taylor started to pull the gold ribbon on the parcel he was carrying. Will put his hand over his.
“Your other present,” he said meaningfully, and Taylor started to laugh.
Blood Heat #3
Lightning flickered in the blue-black distance. Somewhere in the sultry, moonless night, a coyote yipped. Still farther away, another answered. There was no movement in the barren, walled yard. A single light burned in the second story of the pueblo-style house.
“I don’t like it,” Will muttered, ducking back from the gate to land against the thick adobe wall next to his partner.
Taylor shot him a quick look and laughed, a ghost of a sound. Taylor hadn’t liked this setup since they’d arrived in Denver to find their prisoner, suspected terrorist Kelila Hedwig, had somehow charmed her way out of police custody and was once more on the run.
Hedwig was the prime suspect in the death of Los Angeles Field Office Director Henry Torres, which was why DSS Special Agents Will Brandt and Taylor MacAllister had been tasked with escorting her back to the City of Angels. Technically, pursuing and reapprehending her was a job for the US Marshals, not the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. But Taylor, ever a cynical and suspicious son of a bitch, had suggested that the cowboys on Nineteenth Street had already had their shot and blown it — in his opinion, a little too conveniently. From the first, there had been an ugly rumor that Hedwig was getting help from the inside.
Will doubted it. He’d seen a couple of photos of Hedwig. She was a frail slip of a girl behind oversize spectacles. True, he was no expert, but he thought it unlikely she’d seduced anyone. He figured Denver PD had underestimated her resourcefulness — and desperation. It happened. It didn’t automatically follow that there was a conspiracy afoot.
If she was getting help, it wasn’t very expert help because, after fleeing Colorado, she’d headed straight back to the mountains of New Mexico and an ex-boyfriend, Reuben Ramirez.
Ramirez was Hedwig’s high school sweetheart. Not that either of them had attended high school on a regular basis. He was an ex-con currently on probation for drug-related charges. Apparently Hedwig wasn’t too much of a bad-girl superstar to forget the little people.
“It’s too quiet,” Will said.
“Nah. Ramirez is a punk. Strictly small-time. It’s not like he can afford to keep a standing army.”
Taylor’s eyes looked silver in the gloom as they met Will’s. His broad but bony shoulder was hard warmth pressing against Will’s, and Will felt a disconcerting stirring in his groin. It caught him at unexpected times, this distracting awareness of Taylor. They’d been partners and best friends for three years, but lovers for only four months. They were still adjusting.
Some parts needed more adjusting than others. He shifted uncomfortably against the still-warm adobe bricks.
“Are we doing this?” Taylor asked when Will didn’t say anything else.
Were they? It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now as they waited outside the mud walls of Ramirez’s hacienda, listening to the crickets, the hot wind skipping across the rocks and sand, and the distant rumble of thunder, Will wondered if they shouldn’t maybe have requested backup from at least the Ruidoso Downs Police Department.
Taylor’s view, unsurprisingly, had been that local law enforcement was likely to get underfoot and complicate things. Taylor had a refreshingly direct approach to such matters. He was also, for such a deceptively graceful-looking guy, a little on the forceful side.
The thought brought a faint, self-conscious smile to Will’s face.
It was too dark to read each other’s expressions, but Taylor must have sensed the smile, because he whispered, “What?”
“Nothing. Are you sure you don’t want to bring in some support on this?”
“I don’t like the fact that it took the feebs nearly a year to track her down, and then twenty-one hours after she’s finally incarcerated, she manages to slip through the cracks again.”
That bothered Will as well. “All right. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Rape and pillage?”
“And people say you’re the sensitive one.”
Taylor’s grin was a glimmer of white in the darkness. He turned from Will, slapping his hands against the dusty brick. “Give me a boost.”
No. Let me go first.
Will caught the words back in time. Technically Taylor was the senior member of the team. Besides, lighter and faster than Will, Taylor had always taken point on this kind of op. But four — no, nearly five — months ago on a routine investigation, Taylor had been shot in the chest and nearly died. He’d recovered and was back to full field agent status, but Will was never going to be able to erase the memory of Taylor slumped on his side, scarlet spreading across his chest as his life’s blood pumped out…
He was smart enough to keep that worry to himself, though. He linked his hands together. Taylor planted his boot squarely in the stirrup and vaulted lightly up, balancing briefly on the wall before dropping down.
Diplomacy in action. Like the slogan said.
Will heard the dull impact of his landing. A few seconds later, the wooden entrance gate was swinging creakily open.
Will slipped through the gap, the soles of his boots whispering on sand.
In the kennels behind the house, dogs were going crazy. Not guard dogs, fortunately. Ramirez fancied himself as some kind of hot-shit breeder. Over the past thirty-six hours, Will had observed that no matter how much noise the dogs made, no one from the house came out to investigate. Being a dog lover, he found himself irked by that on a number of levels — though it was a plus for their immediate purposes.
A minus was the long empty stretch of unlandscaped yard around the house. There was nowhere to hide once they were out of the deep shadow of the surrounding walls. No way to reach the house without running across several very exposed lengths of dirt and rock.
On the bright side — or, actually the not so bright side — the moon was down and there was a heavy indigo cloud cover pierced only by the occasional fork of faraway lightning. Taylor was a swift shade zigzagging through the darkness toward the garage.
Will went left, jogging for the main entrance in the portico beneath the exposed wooden beams. The familiar surge of adrenaline lent him speed, feet pounding the hard-packed earth, pebbles skittering as he ran, ears attuned to the night sounds.
He reached the heavy front door without incident and spared a quick look over his shoulder. There was no sign of Taylor. He would be in position by now — or nearly.
Will wiped his forehead with his arm — the moist air was surprisingly warm — and knocked on the door.
He waited.
Will’s official knock was not easy to ignore, but there was no response from within.
He rapped again, and a dog began to bark inside the house.
Will swore under his breath. He could get a lot louder and a lot more vehement, but he and Taylor had discussed this, and their idea was to attract as little attention as possible since they were, in a manner of speaking, out of their jurisdiction.
Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned to spot Taylor sprinting across the flat top of the garage.
Now what the hell was that about? Taylor was supposed to be watching the back entrance, not playing one-man assault team. No way was he going inside without Will to back him up. Will took a couple of steps in brief retreat and sized up the front door. Kicking any door down was nowhere as easy as movies made it look, and this was a massive and rustic structure. But as far as Will was concerned, that door was kindling. He launched himself at it.
Light flared behind the downstairs windows. Will stumbled to a halt as the front door opened a crack and two suspicious black eyes peered out at him. One eye — a bleary, red-rimmed eye — was human. The other was canine and belonged to some breed of shepherd with a black rectangular muzzle and a lot of sharp white teeth.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” growled the human.
The dog was less articulate but more convincing.
Will kept his voice low. The last thing he wanted to do was spook Ramirez’s houseguest. “Special Agent William Brandt. I’m with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.” He held his badge up so there could be no mistake. “You better hear what I have to say.”
The dog made another lunge through the opening between door and frame. Will took a hasty step back. “Hang on to that mutt if you don’t want me to shoot it.”
“He’s not a mutt. He’s a purebred Anatolian shepherd.”
It didn’t really seem like the time or place for semantics. Will opened his mouth to make himself heard over the snarling dog, but the sound of a shotgun blast from overhead ripped through the night.
A woman started screaming.
The shotgun wasn’t Taylor’s. Taylor and Will were carrying their roscoes and wearing underarmor, but that was the extent of their regulation equipment. Which meant Taylor was under fire.
Will grabbed the edge of the door. Ramirez, if it was Ramirez, let go of the dog, which lunged through the doorway, nails scrabbling on brick as it tried to get to Will.
“Shit!” Will twisted left, then right, like a bullfighter dodging a set of razor-sharp horns. He flung himself forward, bursting through the entrance in the opposite direction of the charging dog, almost simultaneously slamming the door behind him. His heart drummed in his chest as he slumped back against the uneven wooden surface. Shit, shit, shit. Their plan, such as it was, was already crumbling away like sandstone.
The snarling dog threw itself against the door. It sounded like a bear clawing the timbers.
Will had other, more immediate concerns. There was another blast from overhead. The shotgun’s second barrel — definitely not Taylor’s .357 SIG. Taylor was not firing back. There were plenty of reasons for that and none of them meant Taylor was in trouble, but Will still had to fight that instinctive and all-consuming rush of fear.
Ramirez had already fled the tile entryway and was running barefoot for the wooden staircase. His feet slapped the tiles, the tiny, desperate sound carrying oddly down the hallway. Will tore after the man and managed to tackle him three stairs up. Ramirez fell back, and they tumbled down the steps to the tile floor below.
Will’s forehead grazed the edge of one step; his elbow and knee connected sharply with the floor. A goddamned disaster was what this was. He grunted and wrestled his way on top of Ramirez, who was short but muscular, compact and pumped up on adrenaline and possibly other things.
Ramirez flailed with arms and legs. He jabbed at Will’s throat with a move unapproved by the WWF. Will blocked and grabbed Ramirez’s hand, bending it back in a maneuver also frowned on by most wrestling associations. He followed it up with a knee in the groin that would have ended the fight then and there if it had connected as intended.
It didn’t.
Ramirez screeched and began kicking with renewed energy — if not accuracy.
Upstairs the woman was still screaming, which Will distractedly registered as a positive sign. If she was screaming, chances were Taylor was still a threat to her, and that meant he was likely unhurt. In fact, over Ramirez’s gasps and curses, Will could just make out Taylor’s muffled tones.
Will got his handcuffs out and half dragged, half wrangled Ramirez over onto his front side. Straddling his quarry awkwardly, he snapped the cuffs around thick tattooed wrists.
Ramirez yelled. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I tried to tell you. You’re harboring a fugitive, asshole.”
“You’re no cop!”
“If you don’t stop resisting arrest, you’ll find out how much of a cop I am.”
Ramirez tried to rear up and throw Will off. “I’ll fucking kill you if you hurt her.”
“Nobody’s going to get hurt if you shut up and settle down.” Will checked the cuffs and jumped up from Ramirez, avoiding one of his wilder kicks.
“You’re dead. You’re a dead man!”
Ramirez’s curses and the barking of the Anatolian shepherd outside followed Will as he took the stairs two at a time. His footsteps pounded on wood, the staircase shaking beneath him.
He reached the second story and scanned the unlit hallway. At the end of it, light pooled from an open bedroom door. The woman had stopped screaming. The sudden absence of sound was nearly as jarring as the shrieking had been.
Will heard Taylor say quite clearly, “Oh fuck.”
Will drew his weapon, holding it at low ready. “MacAllister?” Something in the tone of Taylor’s voice had raised the hair on Will’s nape. It brought to mind too many alarming — though as yet unrealized — images: Taylor looking down to see he’d been mortally wounded, Taylor realizing he’d just pulled the pin on a grenade, Taylor —
“Brandt, you’d better get in here.” Taylor’s voice interrupted Will’s alarmed speculations.
Will was already on his way down the hall.
Taylor blocked the doorway. He was holding a shotgun in one hand and his weapon in the other, but neither was trained on the room’s occupant.
There was no noise from within the room at all. Jesus. Was it not Hedwig? Had Hedwig been shot in the altercation? Or worse, had someone who was not Hedwig been injured in the altercation?
Will came up behind Taylor, trying to see past him into the room. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Taylor retreated another inch — actually stepping on Will’s toes. Will manfully managed not to yell. In their entire three years of partnership, he had never known Taylor to retreat so much as a centimeter. From anything.
He put a steadying hand on Taylor’s back. “What’s the matter?”
Taylor jerked his head as though it should be obvious what the matter was. Will stared past him. There was a chunk of plaster on the floor where one of the shotgun blasts had taken out a section of the ceiling. The woman was not dead. She didn’t even appear to be injured. She was sitting on the foot of the bed. At first glimpse, Will thought it was not Hedwig. She’d dyed her long, lank hair blonde again, but that was her only effort at disguise. She looked older, her face was a little fuller, and she was not wearing her glasses, but it was unmistakably Kelila Hedwig.
Will threw Taylor a quick, questioning look. Taylor’s profile was grim.
Will turned back to their prisoner. Studied her more closely. She was wearing a big, white, voluminous nightgown, and her skinny arms were wrapped protectively around her midriff. Around her basketball-sized midriff.
“Oh shit.” Will turned back to Taylor. Taylor was shaking his head, repudiating what was only too obvious. “She’s pregnant?”
Dead Run #4
The sign at the entrance of the catacombs read Arrête, c’est ici l’empire de la Mort. Stop, this is the empire of Death.
The creak of body armor, the thud of riot boots, the jingle of dog tags, and the dying gurgle of a hidden aqueduct were the only sounds as Will and the gendarmes descended a narrow spiral stairwell.
The ghostly lighting was dispelled by the white-hot lights of the police torches flitting across the walls of carefully arranged bones. Wet glistened and dripped from the ceiling that was only about six feet high. Will had to stoop to keep from braining himself. In some areas the limestone domes had been reinforced to keep sections of the cavern from collapsing.
“I always wanted to see this place,” Arthur said under his breath to Will.
Gee, how nice that someone was having a good time. For Will it brought back way too many memories of patrolling IED Alley.
Damp gravel crunched underfoot. A radio crackled. Overhead the water continued its drip-drip-drip to the ground. They moved slowly, meticulously, room-by-room, searching for explosives but finding nothing.
The next tunnel made a ninety-degree turn to the right and then, a short way on, to the left. More yellowed, cracked skulls gazing with empty eye sockets into the abyss.
The rich, the poor, the great, and the humble, all stacked like firewood, like bricks in a wall.
Sixty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.
In fact, there were only supposed to be six million interred in the tunnels; even that number was unfathomable — three times the number of those living in the city above.
The commander whispered into his radio, “Espace libre. Déplacement à la prochaine section.”
They shuffled on a few yards. The dogs whined, tugged at their leads, and they moved to investigate another of the many tunnel offshoots. In the parts of the catacomb not open to the public, the bones were not arranged in designs. They were not arranged at all. They were simply dumped like Pick-up Sticks. To cross some of those galleries meant crawling over the scattered bones. Will told himself it was just like climbing over rocks.
He wondered how Taylor was doing. This was a very tight fit. Many of the tunnels were not even eight feet across. Usually no more than two hundred sightseers were permitted in the catacombs at one time. There had to be double that many law enforcement officers moving through the shadowy passages now.
“How far do you think we’ve traveled?” Arthur whispered.
Will shook his head. He checked his watch and was startled to see they’d been underground for over two hours. It really didn’t feel anything like that long, but this was tiring, painstaking, and stressful work. They had to check every possible hiding place, every indentation in the earth, every mound of bones, and every bit of debris that looked a little too artistically placed.
The smell was strange. Mold, damp earth, something funky — not death, or at least the smell of death that Will knew — and the chill was pervasive.
Another hour went by. Then another.
The patrol began to be convinced there was nothing here. No bombs. No Helloco. Not even the usual kids hoping to party undiscovered by the catacomb security.
In Iraq rarely a day had gone by that they didn’t come across a lollipop, and the patrols had consisted of hours poking and prodding every suspicious-looking lump or dip in the ground. IEDs were the second greatest threat to Americans in Iraq. Will still had nightmares about those truffle hunts.
Now here he was in Paris hunting for explosives again.
And so was Taylor.
Up ahead a radio crackled, and an urgent voice said something in French that Will couldn’t follow.
“Did you get that?” he asked Arthur. Arthur had a better grasp of the language.
“I think they’re saying they’ve found something.”
“Who found something?”
Arthur shook his head. It was impossible to hear over the voices speaking excitedly in front of them. Everyone had stopped walking. One of the sniffer dogs suddenly sat back on its haunches and let out a long, bloodcurdling howl.
“What the hell?” Will looked at Arthur. Arthur’s face was pallid and alarmed in the faded light.
Arthur shook his head quickly.
In all his experience in Iraq, Will had never seen a sniffer dog react like that.
The thought no sooner registered than the ground began to shake. Bones clacked as they spilled like dominoes; people began to shout. Sand and water and bits of rock rained down from above.
“What’s happening, Brandt?” yelled Arthur.
“Retreat!” Will ordered. “Go back now.”
The men behind them began to fall back. The last thing Will saw before the lights went out was a grinning, hollow-eyed skull caught in the glare of his flashlight.
Kick Start #5
Chapter One
One minute everything was fine. The next minute the job was going south. Fast.
The limousine with Dragomirov hurtled toward the mouth of the alley where Taylor waited. Not unprepared -- Taylor was never unprepared -- but unsuspecting. Taylor would be occupied watching for threats to Dragomirov. It would not occur to him that Dragomirov was now a threat to him.
So Will reacted, he responded to the threat to Taylor. That’s what partners did, right? Even as Will dropped down onto the top of the limousine, he was mentally justifying his decision to Taylor -- justifying it because before he ever hit the roof, he knew he had made a mistake.
Problem Number One: There was nothing to hang onto. Had the car windows been rolled down…maybe. But the windows were not rolled down, and Will began to slide. The instant the limo braked or turned the corner, he was going to go flying -- at thirty-plus miles an hour. Problem Number Two: Problem Number One was moot, because even if Will didn’t go flying, which he would do any minute now, he had no way of stopping the vehicle. And Problem Number Three: If he did survive, MacAllister was going to kill him.
The rush of garbage-scented air blasted against his face, blurring his vision. The alley was nicer than some alleys in Los Angeles, meaning there were no bums to run over. Orange and green and purple graffiti bled into a long smear of chain link fence topped by coils of barbed wire, old brick walls and metal roll up doors. A couple of phone poles with sagging lines flew by, interspersed with several dumpsters. The alley opening -- and the busy cross street beyond -- was coming up fast. With only seconds to spare, Will wrapped his arms around his head and rolled, launching himself at a fast-approaching blue dumpster.
He missed.
There was a sickening moment of flying through thin -- very thin -- air, and then he crash-landed on a mountain of cardboard boxes and black and white garbage bags.
It wasn’t like the movies. Will landed hard and heavily, the bags giving way, the boxes not so much. It hurt. It hurt a lot. But without the boxes and bags, he’d probably have been killed. He reflected on that for a stunned second or two while he listened to the screech of tires fading into the distance, the pound of approaching footsteps.
“Brandt?” Taylor splashed through a puddle and skidded to a stop. He sounded winded, though the entire alleyway was only a block long. “Will?”
Will opened his eyes as Taylor bent over him. Taylor’s eyes were black in his white face, his jaw set. Ready for the worst.
“Right here,” Will said.
Life came back to Taylor’s face. “Oh, you bastard. Don’t do that to me!” He expelled a long, shaken breath, and began to check Will over with swift, anxious hands. “What the hell was that supposed to be?”
Will gave a weak laugh and raised his head. “Everything still attached?”
“Shut up. Don’t move.”
“I’m fine.” Will waved him off. “I’m fine! Oww!” Yeah, fine was possibly overstating the situation. But he was alive and, miraculously, he seemed to be in one piece. One black and blue piece, probably. “Shit.” Painfully, he crawled out of the stinking, slimy nest of garbage. Taylor moved to help him, removing a shoebox that had gotten stuck on Will’s elbow. Will climbed -- and it did feel like a climb -- to his feet.
“Jesus Christ, Brandt. You want to explain to me what you thought you were doing?” Taylor, sounding much more like his normal ornery self, punched him in the shoulder, and Will toppled back into the trash bags.
“Goddamn it,” Will said slowly and with feeling.
“Sorry,” Taylor muttered, hauling him out of the garbage bags once more. He brushed eggshells off Will’s shoulder. “But what just happened? Explain to me. Why would you act like somebody in a goddamned movie?”
Will shook his head.
“Dragomirov tears out of here like a bat out of hell. With you on the roof of his car. His asshole driver nearly runs me over --”
“We’ve been laid off.”
“What?”
“Fired. Without the severance package, I’m guessing.” Will brushed orange peelings and what looked like -- and pray to God was -- raspberry jelly from the front of his leather jacket. The seat of his Levi’s felt soaked with something he hoped wasn’t caustic. Or toxic.
Taylor looked stunned. “What are you talking about? After ten days? What the hell happened?”
It was a fair question. Will was trying to figure that one out himself. “Gretchen Hart is what happened.”
“Who?”
“Gretchen Hart. New Mexico. Two years ago?” Will prodded. “You remember Victor and Victoria?”
Taylor blinked. “Yeah, but…are you telling me…? What are you telling me?”
“Gretchen Hart apparently now works for Glukhov. She walked into that meeting, recognized me, and gave Dragomirov her version of what happened in New Mexico.”
“Which was what?”
“Pretty close to the truth,” Will admitted.
Taylor opened his mouth but couldn’t seem to find the words. Will knew the feeling. He said wearily, “As predicted, Dragomirov doesn’t like feds. A lot. Even ex-feds. So we’re off the case. I guess he thought we were trying to set him up in some kind of sting operation.”
“What sting? We’re doing low level security work. Mall cops could have handled this gig.”
“I never said Dragomirov was a genius.”
Taylor was silent. Then he said, “How the hell would that bitch recognize you?”
Will shook his head.
Taylor’s face screwed up in anger. “Fuck!” He turned and kicked a white and blue, half-deflated child’s ball that had rolled out of the pile of trash bags. The ball shot to the left, bounced off a green brick wall and landed on the pitted pavement with a flat, angry smack.
Will said nothing. What could he say? Taylor had not wanted to take this job in the first place. But they had needed the money and Will had talked him into it. End result: they had put in ten days working a bodyguard detail for a guy who, though maybe not a crook, was certainly a scumball -- and they would not be getting paid for the privilege.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but no. He was already on defense over the Paris thing; not smart to further weaken his position. Anyway, he wasn’t going to apologize for being a realist. They were not in a position to pick and choose clients. How was he supposed to have known their arch-nemesis would show up? He hadn’t realized they had an arch-nemesis until he’d watched Gretchen Hart freeze in recognition and then morph into the Borg Queen.
Taylor turned back to face him, fists planted on his narrow hips, eyes glinting the same shade as a Mojave Green. “Fuckin’ A. What now?”
“Find a new client, I guess. Shower. Sleep.” They were short on sleep these days. It wasn’t helping.
Taylor bit back whatever he started to say. This unusual restraint was almost worse than hearing him voice his feelings.
“Look,” Will said. “I couldn’t predict this. Nobody could predict this. We’re independent contractors now, and sometimes things are going to go wrong.”
“Does that mean sometimes they’re going to go right?” Taylor inquired. “Because so far…not so much.”
Now it was Will’s turn to hold his tongue. He said shortly, “We’re done here, let’s grab our gear and get the hell out of Dodge.”
Blind Side #6
Chapter One
Will was tired. Pleasantly tired. Taylor was exhausted. Not that he’d admit it, but Will could tell by the way he dropped down by the campfire while Will finished pitching their two-man tent.
One eye on Taylor, Will stowed their sleeping bags inside the Eureka Apex XT. He pulled Taylor’s Therm-a-Rest sleeping pad out of his own backpack where he’d managed to stash it that morning without Taylor noticing, and spread it out on the floor of the tent. He opened the valve and left the pad inflating while he went to join Taylor at the fire.
“Hungry?”
“Always.” Taylor’s grin was wry — and so was Will’s meeting it. Taylor ate like a horse — even in the hospital — although where he put it was anyone’s guess. He was all whippy muscle and fine bones that seemed to be made out of titanium. It was easy to look at him and dismiss him as a threat, but anyone who’d ever tangled with him didn’t make that mistake twice.
He was too thin now, though, which was why Will was carrying about three pounds more food in his pack than they probably needed. He watched Taylor feeding wood into the flames. In the firelight his face was all sharps and angles. His eyes looked almost black with fatigue — they weren’t black, though, they were a kind of burnished green — an indefinable shade of bronze that reminded Will of old armor. Very striking with his black hair — Will’s gaze lingered on Taylor’s hair, on that odd single streak of silver since the shooting.
He didn’t want to think about the shooting. Didn’t want to think about finding Taylor in a dingy storeroom with his shirt and blazer soaked in blood — Taylor struggling for each anguished breath. He still had nightmares about that.
He said, talking himself away from the memory, “Well, monsieur, tonight zee specials are zee beef stroganoff, zee Mexican-style chicken, or zee lasagna with meat sauce.”
“What won’t they freeze-dry next?” Taylor marveled.
“Nothing. You name it, they’ll freeze-dry it. We’ve got Neapolitan ice cream for dessert.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Just like the astronauts eat.”
“We pay astronauts to sit around drinking Tang and eating freeze-dried ice cream?”
“Your tax dollars at work.” Will’s eyes assessed Taylor. “Here.” He shifted, pulled his flask out of his hip pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Taylor. “Before dinner cocktails.”
“Cheers.” Taylor took a swig and shuddered.
“Hey,” Will protested. “That’s Sam Houston bourbon. You know how hard that it is to find?”
“Yeah, I know. I bought you a bottle for Christmas year before last.”
“That’s right. Then you know just how good this is.”
“Not if you don’t like it.” But Taylor was smiling — which was good to see. Not too many smiles between them since that last night at Will’s apartment. And he wanted to think about that even less than he wanted to think about Taylor getting shot.
“Son, that bourbon will put hair on your chest,” he said.
“Yeah, well, unlike you I prefer my bears in the woods.”
There was a brief uncomfortable pause while they both remembered a certain naval officer, and then Taylor took another swig and handed the flask back to Will.
“Thanks.”
Will grunted acknowledgment.
He thought about telling Taylor he hadn’t seen Bradley since that god-awful night, but that was liable to make things worse — it would certainly confuse the issue, because regardless of what Taylor believed, the issue had never been Lieutenant Commander David Bradley.
Taylor put a hand to the small of his back, arching a little, wincing — and Will watched him, chewing the inside of his cheek, thinking it over. It was taking a while to get back into sync, that was all. It was just going to take a little time. Sure, Taylor was moody, a little distant, but he still wasn’t 100 percent.
He was getting there, though. Getting there fast — because once Taylor put his mind to a thing, it was as good as done. Usually. When he started back at work he’d be stuck on desk duty for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so, but he’d be back in the field before long, and Will was counting the days. He missed Taylor like he’d miss his right arm. Maybe more.
Even now he was afraid — but there was no point thinking like that. They were okay. They just needed time to work through it. And the best way to do that was to leave the past alone.
“Warm enough?” he asked.
Taylor gave him a long, unfriendly look.
“Hey, just asking.” Will rose. “I was going to get a sweater out of my bag for myself.”
Taylor relaxed. “Yeah. Can you grab my fleece vest?”
Will nodded, and passing Taylor, took a swipe at the back of his head, which Taylor neatly ducked.
* * * * *
They had instant black bean soup and the Mexican-style chicken for dinner, and followed it up with the freeze-dried ice cream and coffee.
“It’s not bad,” Taylor offered, breaking off a piece of ice cream and popping it into his mouth.
Actually the ice cream wasn’t that bad. It crunched when you put it into your mouth, then dissolved immediately, but Will said, “What do you know? You’ll eat anything. If I didn’t watch out you’d be eating poison mushrooms or poison berries or poison oak.”
Taylor grinned. It was true; he was a city boy through and through. Will was the outdoors guy. He was the one who thought a week of camping and hiking was what they needed to get back on track; Taylor was humoring him by coming along on this trip. In fact, Will was still a little surprised Taylor had agreed. Taylor’s idea of vacation time well spent was on the water and in the sun: renting a house boat — like they had last summer — or deep sea fishing — which Taylor had done on his own the year before.
“They never did arrest anyone in connection with that heist, did they?” Taylor said thoughtfully, after a few more minutes of companionable chewing.
“What heist?”
Taylor threw him an impatient look. “The robbery at the Black Wolf Casino.”
“Oh. Not that I heard. I wasn’t really following it.” Taylor had a brain like a computer when it came to crimes and unsolved mysteries. When Will wasn’t working, which, granted, was rarely, the last thing he wanted to do was think about crooks and crime — especially the ones that had nothing to do with them.
But Taylor was shaking his head like Will was truly a lost cause, so he volunteered, “There was something about the croupier, right? She was questioned a couple of times.”
“Yeah. Questioned but never charged.” He shivered.
Will frowned. “You all right?”
“Jesus, Brandt, will you give it a fucking rest!” And just like that, Taylor was unsmiling, stone-faced and hostile.
There was a short, sharp silence. “Christ, you can be an unpleasant bastard,” Will said finally, evenly. He threw the last of his foil-wrapped ice cream into the fire, and the flames jumped, sparks shooting up with bits of blackened metal.
Taylor said tersely, “You want a more pleasant bastard for a partner, say the word.”
The instant aggression caught Will off guard. Where the hell had it come from? “No, I don’t want someone more pleasant,” he said. “I don’t want a new partner.”
Taylor stared at the fire. “Maybe I do,” he said quietly.
Will stared at him. He felt like he’d been sucker punched. Dopey and…off-kilter.
“Why’d you say that?” he asked finally into the raw silence between them.
He saw Taylor’s throat move, saw him swallowing hard, and he understood that although Taylor had spoken on impulse, he meant it — and that he was absorbing that truth even as Will was.
“We’re good together,” Will said, not giving Taylor time to answer — afraid that if Taylor put it into words they wouldn’t be able to go back from it. “We’re…the best. Partners and friends.”
He realized he was gripping his coffee cup so hard he was about to snap the plastic handle.
Taylor said, his voice low but steady, “Yeah. We are. But…it might be better for both of us if we were reteamed.”
“Better for you, you mean?”
Taylor met his eyes. “Yeah. Better for me.”
And now Will was getting angry. It took him a moment to recognize the symptoms because he wasn’t a guy who got mad easily or often — and never at Taylor. Exasperated, maybe. Disapproving sometimes, yeah. But angry? Not with Taylor. Not even for getting himself shot like a goddamned wet-behind-the-ears recruit. But that prickling flush beneath his skin, that pounding in his temples, that rush of adrenaline — that was anger. And it was all for Taylor.
Will threw his cup away and stood up — aware that Taylor tensed. Which made him even madder — and Will was plenty mad already. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “This is payback. This is you getting your own back — holding the partnership hostage to your hurt ego. This is all because I won’t sleep with you, isn’t it? That’s what it’s really about.”
And Taylor said in that same infuriatingly even tone, “If that’s what you want to think, go ahead.”
Right. Taylor — the guy who jumped first and thought second, if at all; who couldn’t stop shooting his mouth off if his life depended on it; who thought three months equaled the love of a lifetime — suddenly he was Mr. Cool and Reasonable. What a goddamn laugh. Mr. Wounded Dignity sitting there staring at Will with those wide, bleak eyes.
“What am I supposed to think?” Will asked, and it took effort to keep his voice as level as Taylor’s. “That you’re in love? We both know what this is about, and it ain’t love, buddy boy. You just can’t handle the fact that anyone could turn you down.”
“Fuck you,” Taylor said, abandoning the cool and reasonable thing.
“My point exactly,” Will shot back. “And you know what? Fine. If that’s what I have to do to hold this team together, fine. Let’s fuck. Let’s get it out of the way once and for all. If that’s your price, then okay. I’m more than willing to take one for the team — or am I supposed to do you? Whichever is fine by me because unlike you, MacAllister, I —”
With an inarticulate sound, Taylor launched himself at Will, and Will, unprepared, fell back over the log he’d been sitting on, head ringing from Taylor’s fist connecting with his jaw. This was rage, not passion, although for one bewildered instant Will’s body processed the feel of Taylor’s hard, thin, muscular length landing on top of his own body as a good thing — a very good thing.
This was followed by the very bad thing of Taylor trying to knee him in the guts — which sent a new and clearer message to Will’s mind and body.
And there was nothing Will would have loved more than to let go and pulverize Taylor, to take him apart, piece by piece, but he didn’t forget for an instant — even if Taylor did — how physically vulnerable Taylor still was; so his efforts went into keeping Taylor from injuring himself — which was not easy to do wriggling and rolling around on the uneven ground. Even at 75 percent, Taylor was a significant threat, and Will took a few hits before he managed to wind his arms around the other man’s torso, yanking him into a sitting position facing Will, and immobilizing him in a butterfly lock.
Taylor tried a couple of heaves, but he had tired fast. Will was the better wrestler anyway, being taller, broader, and heavier. Taylor relied on speed and surprise; he went in for all kinds of esoteric martial arts, which was fine unless someone like Will got him on the ground. Taylor was usually too smart to let that happen, which just went to show how furious he was.
Will could feel that fury still shaking Taylor — locked in this ugly parody of a lover’s embrace. He shook with exhaustion too, breath shuddering in his lungs as he panted into Will’s shoulder. His wind was shit these days, his heart banging frantically against Will’s. These marks of physical distress undermined Will’s own anger, reminding him how recently he had almost lost Taylor for good.
Taylor’s moist breath against Will’s ear was sending a confusingly erotic message, his body hot and sweaty — but Christ, he was thin. Will could feel — could practically count — ribs, the hard links of spine, the ridges of scapula in Taylor’s fleshless back. And it scared him; his hold changed instinctively from lock to hug.
“You crazy bastard,” he muttered into Taylor’s hair.
Taylor struggled again, and this time Will let him go. Taylor got up, not looking at Will, not speaking, walking unsteadily, but with a peculiar dignity, over to the tent.
Watching him, Will opened his mouth, then shut it. Why the hell would he apologize? Taylor had jumped him. He watched, scowling, as Taylor crawled inside the tent, rolled out his sleeping bag onto the air mattress Will had remembered to set up for him, pulled his boots off, and climbed into the bag, pulling the flap over his head — like something going back into its shell.
This is stupid, Will thought. We neither of us want this. But what he said was, “Sweet dreams to you too.”
Taylor said nothing.
Old Poison #2
Will parked behind Taylor’s silver Acura MDX in the narrow side driveway and got out of his own Toyota Land Cruiser. Evenings were damp this close to the beach. The air smelled of salt and old seaweed -- corrupt yet invigorating.
He let Riley out of the passenger side of the SUV. Riley trotted down the driveway to the large, overgrown backyard, barking a warning to the neighborhood cats.
Will slid the gate shut. The house was an original Craftsman bungalow. It had been in terrible shape when Taylor bought it two years previously. Actually, it was still in terrible shape, but Taylor was renovating it, one room at a time, in his spare hours.
Will got his duffel bag of the backseat and the heavy, blue-and-gold-wrapped birthday present. He felt self-conscious about that present; he’d spent a lot of time and a fair amount of money on Taylor this year.
Hard to forget that Taylor nearly hadn’t lived to see this birthday.
Speak of the devil. The side door opened, and Taylor came down the steps, an unguarded grin breaking the remote beauty of his face. There was a funny catch in Will’s throat as he saw him alive and strong and smiling again.
“How was traffic?”
Will opened his mouth, but the next instant Taylor was in his arms, his mouth covering Will’s in unaffected hunger. They were safe here. The cinder-block wall was high, and the bougainvillea draping over the edge of the roof neatly blocked out the view of this driveway from the street.
“Man, I missed you,” Taylor said when they surfaced for air.
“You saw me this morning.”
“For three minutes in front of Varga, Jabowitz, and Cooper. It’s not the same.”
“No,” agreed Will, “it’s not the same.” His gaze rested on Taylor’s face; his heart seemed to swell with a quiet joy. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” Taylor’s smile widened. “Hey, I got your card.”
“Oh.” Will was a little embarrassed about that card. To My Sweetheart or whatever it said. Kind of over-the-top. He’d bought it on impulse. Taylor was smiling, though, and with no sign of mockery, so maybe it was okay.
“Is that for me?” Taylor asked as Will retrieved the tote bag and parcel he’d dropped when Taylor landed in his arms.
“Nah. I’m heading over to another party after I get done here.” Will shoved the blue-and-gold present into his hands. “Yes, it’s for you.”
“Okay if I open it now?”
“You’re the most impatient guy I ever met.” Will was amused, though.
“Hey, I waited three years for you,” Taylor threw over his shoulder, heading up the stairs into the house.
“Yeah, remind me again how you whiled away the hours in that lonely monastery as you waited?”
Taylor’s chuckle drifted back.
Will heeled the side door shut and followed Taylor through the mud porch and into the kitchen.
This was one of the first rooms Taylor had renovated: a cozy breakfast nook with built-in window benches, gleaming mahogany cabinets and drawers with patinated copper fixtures, green granite counters, and gray-green slate floor. The numerous cabinets were well designed and well organized. The care and priority given the kitchen might have deceived someone into thinking cooking played a role in Taylor’s life. In fact, the kitchen had been designed to please Will -- the only person who had ever cooked a meal in that house.
There was a German chocolate cake on the table in the breakfast nook. Will’s card was propped next to it with a couple of others: To Our Son, To My Son, To My Brother, What is a Brother? Happy Birthday, Uncle. Greetings from the whole tribe. To the side of these was a wine bottle-shaped science experiment gone awry.
“What the hell is that?” Will peered more closely at the pickled contents of the wine bottle. What it was, was a fucking cobra. The cobra stared back sightlessly at him, fangs bared.
“It’s my snake. I’ve been waiting all day to show it to you.” Taylor wiggled his eyebrows salaciously.
“Funny,” said Will, glancing at him. “Where did you get it?”
“It came in the mail.”
“Who sent it?”
Taylor shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“The card must have got lost.”
They both studied the bottle.
“What is the liquid?”
“Rice wine.”
“Is it poison?”
“It’s not supposed to be. In fact, it’s supposed to be a cure-all -- and an aphrodisiac.”
“I bet bourbon works just as well, and you don’t have that nasty cobra aftertaste.”
Taylor’s smile was preoccupied. Will gave him a closer look.
“You don’t have any idea who would have sent something like this?”
Taylor shook his head. Will laughed and threw an arm around his wide, bony shoulders.
“Spooked?”
“Nah.” But Taylor’s brows were drawn together as he continued to gaze at the bottle. “Weird, though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Taylor had some weird friends. And weirder acquaintances. He had been in the DS longer than Will, signing on right out of college, and he’d been posted to Tokyo, Afghanistan, and briefly, Haiti. The next time he was posted overseas it would be as a regional security officer responsible for managing security operations for an embassy or for a number of diplomatic posts within an assigned area. That was one reason Will was hesitant to move in with him. Not a lot of point in setting up house when one or both of them could be stationed overseas within a year or so.
Taylor didn’t see it this way, of course. Taylor’s idea was they should move in together immediately and they’d deal with the threat of a future separation when -- if -- it happened. He’d always had a tendency to leave tomorrow to take care of itself, but getting shot had cemented his determination to live every day as though it were his last.
Will understood that. He even agreed with it, in principle, but what happened to him when Taylor was posted overseas for three-or-so years? Things weren’t as simple as Taylor liked to pretend.
He glanced at Taylor’s profile. He was frowning, and Will did not want him frowning on his birthday.
“Hey,” he said softly. Taylor’s head turned his way. “Want to open your present?”
“Sure.” Taylor started to pull the gold ribbon on the parcel he was carrying. Will put his hand over his.
“Your other present,” he said meaningfully, and Taylor started to laugh.
Blood Heat #3
Lightning flickered in the blue-black distance. Somewhere in the sultry, moonless night, a coyote yipped. Still farther away, another answered. There was no movement in the barren, walled yard. A single light burned in the second story of the pueblo-style house.
“I don’t like it,” Will muttered, ducking back from the gate to land against the thick adobe wall next to his partner.
Taylor shot him a quick look and laughed, a ghost of a sound. Taylor hadn’t liked this setup since they’d arrived in Denver to find their prisoner, suspected terrorist Kelila Hedwig, had somehow charmed her way out of police custody and was once more on the run.
Hedwig was the prime suspect in the death of Los Angeles Field Office Director Henry Torres, which was why DSS Special Agents Will Brandt and Taylor MacAllister had been tasked with escorting her back to the City of Angels. Technically, pursuing and reapprehending her was a job for the US Marshals, not the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. But Taylor, ever a cynical and suspicious son of a bitch, had suggested that the cowboys on Nineteenth Street had already had their shot and blown it — in his opinion, a little too conveniently. From the first, there had been an ugly rumor that Hedwig was getting help from the inside.
Will doubted it. He’d seen a couple of photos of Hedwig. She was a frail slip of a girl behind oversize spectacles. True, he was no expert, but he thought it unlikely she’d seduced anyone. He figured Denver PD had underestimated her resourcefulness — and desperation. It happened. It didn’t automatically follow that there was a conspiracy afoot.
If she was getting help, it wasn’t very expert help because, after fleeing Colorado, she’d headed straight back to the mountains of New Mexico and an ex-boyfriend, Reuben Ramirez.
Ramirez was Hedwig’s high school sweetheart. Not that either of them had attended high school on a regular basis. He was an ex-con currently on probation for drug-related charges. Apparently Hedwig wasn’t too much of a bad-girl superstar to forget the little people.
“It’s too quiet,” Will said.
“Nah. Ramirez is a punk. Strictly small-time. It’s not like he can afford to keep a standing army.”
Taylor’s eyes looked silver in the gloom as they met Will’s. His broad but bony shoulder was hard warmth pressing against Will’s, and Will felt a disconcerting stirring in his groin. It caught him at unexpected times, this distracting awareness of Taylor. They’d been partners and best friends for three years, but lovers for only four months. They were still adjusting.
Some parts needed more adjusting than others. He shifted uncomfortably against the still-warm adobe bricks.
“Are we doing this?” Taylor asked when Will didn’t say anything else.
Were they? It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now as they waited outside the mud walls of Ramirez’s hacienda, listening to the crickets, the hot wind skipping across the rocks and sand, and the distant rumble of thunder, Will wondered if they shouldn’t maybe have requested backup from at least the Ruidoso Downs Police Department.
Taylor’s view, unsurprisingly, had been that local law enforcement was likely to get underfoot and complicate things. Taylor had a refreshingly direct approach to such matters. He was also, for such a deceptively graceful-looking guy, a little on the forceful side.
The thought brought a faint, self-conscious smile to Will’s face.
It was too dark to read each other’s expressions, but Taylor must have sensed the smile, because he whispered, “What?”
“Nothing. Are you sure you don’t want to bring in some support on this?”
“I don’t like the fact that it took the feebs nearly a year to track her down, and then twenty-one hours after she’s finally incarcerated, she manages to slip through the cracks again.”
That bothered Will as well. “All right. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Rape and pillage?”
“And people say you’re the sensitive one.”
Taylor’s grin was a glimmer of white in the darkness. He turned from Will, slapping his hands against the dusty brick. “Give me a boost.”
No. Let me go first.
Will caught the words back in time. Technically Taylor was the senior member of the team. Besides, lighter and faster than Will, Taylor had always taken point on this kind of op. But four — no, nearly five — months ago on a routine investigation, Taylor had been shot in the chest and nearly died. He’d recovered and was back to full field agent status, but Will was never going to be able to erase the memory of Taylor slumped on his side, scarlet spreading across his chest as his life’s blood pumped out…
He was smart enough to keep that worry to himself, though. He linked his hands together. Taylor planted his boot squarely in the stirrup and vaulted lightly up, balancing briefly on the wall before dropping down.
Diplomacy in action. Like the slogan said.
Will heard the dull impact of his landing. A few seconds later, the wooden entrance gate was swinging creakily open.
Will slipped through the gap, the soles of his boots whispering on sand.
In the kennels behind the house, dogs were going crazy. Not guard dogs, fortunately. Ramirez fancied himself as some kind of hot-shit breeder. Over the past thirty-six hours, Will had observed that no matter how much noise the dogs made, no one from the house came out to investigate. Being a dog lover, he found himself irked by that on a number of levels — though it was a plus for their immediate purposes.
A minus was the long empty stretch of unlandscaped yard around the house. There was nowhere to hide once they were out of the deep shadow of the surrounding walls. No way to reach the house without running across several very exposed lengths of dirt and rock.
On the bright side — or, actually the not so bright side — the moon was down and there was a heavy indigo cloud cover pierced only by the occasional fork of faraway lightning. Taylor was a swift shade zigzagging through the darkness toward the garage.
Will went left, jogging for the main entrance in the portico beneath the exposed wooden beams. The familiar surge of adrenaline lent him speed, feet pounding the hard-packed earth, pebbles skittering as he ran, ears attuned to the night sounds.
He reached the heavy front door without incident and spared a quick look over his shoulder. There was no sign of Taylor. He would be in position by now — or nearly.
Will wiped his forehead with his arm — the moist air was surprisingly warm — and knocked on the door.
He waited.
Will’s official knock was not easy to ignore, but there was no response from within.
He rapped again, and a dog began to bark inside the house.
Will swore under his breath. He could get a lot louder and a lot more vehement, but he and Taylor had discussed this, and their idea was to attract as little attention as possible since they were, in a manner of speaking, out of their jurisdiction.
Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned to spot Taylor sprinting across the flat top of the garage.
Now what the hell was that about? Taylor was supposed to be watching the back entrance, not playing one-man assault team. No way was he going inside without Will to back him up. Will took a couple of steps in brief retreat and sized up the front door. Kicking any door down was nowhere as easy as movies made it look, and this was a massive and rustic structure. But as far as Will was concerned, that door was kindling. He launched himself at it.
Light flared behind the downstairs windows. Will stumbled to a halt as the front door opened a crack and two suspicious black eyes peered out at him. One eye — a bleary, red-rimmed eye — was human. The other was canine and belonged to some breed of shepherd with a black rectangular muzzle and a lot of sharp white teeth.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” growled the human.
The dog was less articulate but more convincing.
Will kept his voice low. The last thing he wanted to do was spook Ramirez’s houseguest. “Special Agent William Brandt. I’m with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.” He held his badge up so there could be no mistake. “You better hear what I have to say.”
The dog made another lunge through the opening between door and frame. Will took a hasty step back. “Hang on to that mutt if you don’t want me to shoot it.”
“He’s not a mutt. He’s a purebred Anatolian shepherd.”
It didn’t really seem like the time or place for semantics. Will opened his mouth to make himself heard over the snarling dog, but the sound of a shotgun blast from overhead ripped through the night.
A woman started screaming.
The shotgun wasn’t Taylor’s. Taylor and Will were carrying their roscoes and wearing underarmor, but that was the extent of their regulation equipment. Which meant Taylor was under fire.
Will grabbed the edge of the door. Ramirez, if it was Ramirez, let go of the dog, which lunged through the doorway, nails scrabbling on brick as it tried to get to Will.
“Shit!” Will twisted left, then right, like a bullfighter dodging a set of razor-sharp horns. He flung himself forward, bursting through the entrance in the opposite direction of the charging dog, almost simultaneously slamming the door behind him. His heart drummed in his chest as he slumped back against the uneven wooden surface. Shit, shit, shit. Their plan, such as it was, was already crumbling away like sandstone.
The snarling dog threw itself against the door. It sounded like a bear clawing the timbers.
Will had other, more immediate concerns. There was another blast from overhead. The shotgun’s second barrel — definitely not Taylor’s .357 SIG. Taylor was not firing back. There were plenty of reasons for that and none of them meant Taylor was in trouble, but Will still had to fight that instinctive and all-consuming rush of fear.
Ramirez had already fled the tile entryway and was running barefoot for the wooden staircase. His feet slapped the tiles, the tiny, desperate sound carrying oddly down the hallway. Will tore after the man and managed to tackle him three stairs up. Ramirez fell back, and they tumbled down the steps to the tile floor below.
Will’s forehead grazed the edge of one step; his elbow and knee connected sharply with the floor. A goddamned disaster was what this was. He grunted and wrestled his way on top of Ramirez, who was short but muscular, compact and pumped up on adrenaline and possibly other things.
Ramirez flailed with arms and legs. He jabbed at Will’s throat with a move unapproved by the WWF. Will blocked and grabbed Ramirez’s hand, bending it back in a maneuver also frowned on by most wrestling associations. He followed it up with a knee in the groin that would have ended the fight then and there if it had connected as intended.
It didn’t.
Ramirez screeched and began kicking with renewed energy — if not accuracy.
Upstairs the woman was still screaming, which Will distractedly registered as a positive sign. If she was screaming, chances were Taylor was still a threat to her, and that meant he was likely unhurt. In fact, over Ramirez’s gasps and curses, Will could just make out Taylor’s muffled tones.
Will got his handcuffs out and half dragged, half wrangled Ramirez over onto his front side. Straddling his quarry awkwardly, he snapped the cuffs around thick tattooed wrists.
Ramirez yelled. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I tried to tell you. You’re harboring a fugitive, asshole.”
“You’re no cop!”
“If you don’t stop resisting arrest, you’ll find out how much of a cop I am.”
Ramirez tried to rear up and throw Will off. “I’ll fucking kill you if you hurt her.”
“Nobody’s going to get hurt if you shut up and settle down.” Will checked the cuffs and jumped up from Ramirez, avoiding one of his wilder kicks.
“You’re dead. You’re a dead man!”
Ramirez’s curses and the barking of the Anatolian shepherd outside followed Will as he took the stairs two at a time. His footsteps pounded on wood, the staircase shaking beneath him.
He reached the second story and scanned the unlit hallway. At the end of it, light pooled from an open bedroom door. The woman had stopped screaming. The sudden absence of sound was nearly as jarring as the shrieking had been.
Will heard Taylor say quite clearly, “Oh fuck.”
Will drew his weapon, holding it at low ready. “MacAllister?” Something in the tone of Taylor’s voice had raised the hair on Will’s nape. It brought to mind too many alarming — though as yet unrealized — images: Taylor looking down to see he’d been mortally wounded, Taylor realizing he’d just pulled the pin on a grenade, Taylor —
“Brandt, you’d better get in here.” Taylor’s voice interrupted Will’s alarmed speculations.
Will was already on his way down the hall.
Taylor blocked the doorway. He was holding a shotgun in one hand and his weapon in the other, but neither was trained on the room’s occupant.
There was no noise from within the room at all. Jesus. Was it not Hedwig? Had Hedwig been shot in the altercation? Or worse, had someone who was not Hedwig been injured in the altercation?
Will came up behind Taylor, trying to see past him into the room. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Taylor retreated another inch — actually stepping on Will’s toes. Will manfully managed not to yell. In their entire three years of partnership, he had never known Taylor to retreat so much as a centimeter. From anything.
He put a steadying hand on Taylor’s back. “What’s the matter?”
Taylor jerked his head as though it should be obvious what the matter was. Will stared past him. There was a chunk of plaster on the floor where one of the shotgun blasts had taken out a section of the ceiling. The woman was not dead. She didn’t even appear to be injured. She was sitting on the foot of the bed. At first glimpse, Will thought it was not Hedwig. She’d dyed her long, lank hair blonde again, but that was her only effort at disguise. She looked older, her face was a little fuller, and she was not wearing her glasses, but it was unmistakably Kelila Hedwig.
Will threw Taylor a quick, questioning look. Taylor’s profile was grim.
Will turned back to their prisoner. Studied her more closely. She was wearing a big, white, voluminous nightgown, and her skinny arms were wrapped protectively around her midriff. Around her basketball-sized midriff.
“Oh shit.” Will turned back to Taylor. Taylor was shaking his head, repudiating what was only too obvious. “She’s pregnant?”
Dead Run #4
The sign at the entrance of the catacombs read Arrête, c’est ici l’empire de la Mort. Stop, this is the empire of Death.
The creak of body armor, the thud of riot boots, the jingle of dog tags, and the dying gurgle of a hidden aqueduct were the only sounds as Will and the gendarmes descended a narrow spiral stairwell.
The ghostly lighting was dispelled by the white-hot lights of the police torches flitting across the walls of carefully arranged bones. Wet glistened and dripped from the ceiling that was only about six feet high. Will had to stoop to keep from braining himself. In some areas the limestone domes had been reinforced to keep sections of the cavern from collapsing.
“I always wanted to see this place,” Arthur said under his breath to Will.
Gee, how nice that someone was having a good time. For Will it brought back way too many memories of patrolling IED Alley.
Damp gravel crunched underfoot. A radio crackled. Overhead the water continued its drip-drip-drip to the ground. They moved slowly, meticulously, room-by-room, searching for explosives but finding nothing.
The next tunnel made a ninety-degree turn to the right and then, a short way on, to the left. More yellowed, cracked skulls gazing with empty eye sockets into the abyss.
The rich, the poor, the great, and the humble, all stacked like firewood, like bricks in a wall.
Sixty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.
In fact, there were only supposed to be six million interred in the tunnels; even that number was unfathomable — three times the number of those living in the city above.
The commander whispered into his radio, “Espace libre. Déplacement à la prochaine section.”
They shuffled on a few yards. The dogs whined, tugged at their leads, and they moved to investigate another of the many tunnel offshoots. In the parts of the catacomb not open to the public, the bones were not arranged in designs. They were not arranged at all. They were simply dumped like Pick-up Sticks. To cross some of those galleries meant crawling over the scattered bones. Will told himself it was just like climbing over rocks.
He wondered how Taylor was doing. This was a very tight fit. Many of the tunnels were not even eight feet across. Usually no more than two hundred sightseers were permitted in the catacombs at one time. There had to be double that many law enforcement officers moving through the shadowy passages now.
“How far do you think we’ve traveled?” Arthur whispered.
Will shook his head. He checked his watch and was startled to see they’d been underground for over two hours. It really didn’t feel anything like that long, but this was tiring, painstaking, and stressful work. They had to check every possible hiding place, every indentation in the earth, every mound of bones, and every bit of debris that looked a little too artistically placed.
The smell was strange. Mold, damp earth, something funky — not death, or at least the smell of death that Will knew — and the chill was pervasive.
Another hour went by. Then another.
The patrol began to be convinced there was nothing here. No bombs. No Helloco. Not even the usual kids hoping to party undiscovered by the catacomb security.
In Iraq rarely a day had gone by that they didn’t come across a lollipop, and the patrols had consisted of hours poking and prodding every suspicious-looking lump or dip in the ground. IEDs were the second greatest threat to Americans in Iraq. Will still had nightmares about those truffle hunts.
Now here he was in Paris hunting for explosives again.
And so was Taylor.
Up ahead a radio crackled, and an urgent voice said something in French that Will couldn’t follow.
“Did you get that?” he asked Arthur. Arthur had a better grasp of the language.
“I think they’re saying they’ve found something.”
“Who found something?”
Arthur shook his head. It was impossible to hear over the voices speaking excitedly in front of them. Everyone had stopped walking. One of the sniffer dogs suddenly sat back on its haunches and let out a long, bloodcurdling howl.
“What the hell?” Will looked at Arthur. Arthur’s face was pallid and alarmed in the faded light.
Arthur shook his head quickly.
In all his experience in Iraq, Will had never seen a sniffer dog react like that.
The thought no sooner registered than the ground began to shake. Bones clacked as they spilled like dominoes; people began to shout. Sand and water and bits of rock rained down from above.
“What’s happening, Brandt?” yelled Arthur.
“Retreat!” Will ordered. “Go back now.”
The men behind them began to fall back. The last thing Will saw before the lights went out was a grinning, hollow-eyed skull caught in the glare of his flashlight.
Kick Start #5
Chapter One
One minute everything was fine. The next minute the job was going south. Fast.
The limousine with Dragomirov hurtled toward the mouth of the alley where Taylor waited. Not unprepared -- Taylor was never unprepared -- but unsuspecting. Taylor would be occupied watching for threats to Dragomirov. It would not occur to him that Dragomirov was now a threat to him.
So Will reacted, he responded to the threat to Taylor. That’s what partners did, right? Even as Will dropped down onto the top of the limousine, he was mentally justifying his decision to Taylor -- justifying it because before he ever hit the roof, he knew he had made a mistake.
Problem Number One: There was nothing to hang onto. Had the car windows been rolled down…maybe. But the windows were not rolled down, and Will began to slide. The instant the limo braked or turned the corner, he was going to go flying -- at thirty-plus miles an hour. Problem Number Two: Problem Number One was moot, because even if Will didn’t go flying, which he would do any minute now, he had no way of stopping the vehicle. And Problem Number Three: If he did survive, MacAllister was going to kill him.
The rush of garbage-scented air blasted against his face, blurring his vision. The alley was nicer than some alleys in Los Angeles, meaning there were no bums to run over. Orange and green and purple graffiti bled into a long smear of chain link fence topped by coils of barbed wire, old brick walls and metal roll up doors. A couple of phone poles with sagging lines flew by, interspersed with several dumpsters. The alley opening -- and the busy cross street beyond -- was coming up fast. With only seconds to spare, Will wrapped his arms around his head and rolled, launching himself at a fast-approaching blue dumpster.
He missed.
There was a sickening moment of flying through thin -- very thin -- air, and then he crash-landed on a mountain of cardboard boxes and black and white garbage bags.
It wasn’t like the movies. Will landed hard and heavily, the bags giving way, the boxes not so much. It hurt. It hurt a lot. But without the boxes and bags, he’d probably have been killed. He reflected on that for a stunned second or two while he listened to the screech of tires fading into the distance, the pound of approaching footsteps.
“Brandt?” Taylor splashed through a puddle and skidded to a stop. He sounded winded, though the entire alleyway was only a block long. “Will?”
Will opened his eyes as Taylor bent over him. Taylor’s eyes were black in his white face, his jaw set. Ready for the worst.
“Right here,” Will said.
Life came back to Taylor’s face. “Oh, you bastard. Don’t do that to me!” He expelled a long, shaken breath, and began to check Will over with swift, anxious hands. “What the hell was that supposed to be?”
Will gave a weak laugh and raised his head. “Everything still attached?”
“Shut up. Don’t move.”
“I’m fine.” Will waved him off. “I’m fine! Oww!” Yeah, fine was possibly overstating the situation. But he was alive and, miraculously, he seemed to be in one piece. One black and blue piece, probably. “Shit.” Painfully, he crawled out of the stinking, slimy nest of garbage. Taylor moved to help him, removing a shoebox that had gotten stuck on Will’s elbow. Will climbed -- and it did feel like a climb -- to his feet.
“Jesus Christ, Brandt. You want to explain to me what you thought you were doing?” Taylor, sounding much more like his normal ornery self, punched him in the shoulder, and Will toppled back into the trash bags.
“Goddamn it,” Will said slowly and with feeling.
“Sorry,” Taylor muttered, hauling him out of the garbage bags once more. He brushed eggshells off Will’s shoulder. “But what just happened? Explain to me. Why would you act like somebody in a goddamned movie?”
Will shook his head.
“Dragomirov tears out of here like a bat out of hell. With you on the roof of his car. His asshole driver nearly runs me over --”
“We’ve been laid off.”
“What?”
“Fired. Without the severance package, I’m guessing.” Will brushed orange peelings and what looked like -- and pray to God was -- raspberry jelly from the front of his leather jacket. The seat of his Levi’s felt soaked with something he hoped wasn’t caustic. Or toxic.
Taylor looked stunned. “What are you talking about? After ten days? What the hell happened?”
It was a fair question. Will was trying to figure that one out himself. “Gretchen Hart is what happened.”
“Who?”
“Gretchen Hart. New Mexico. Two years ago?” Will prodded. “You remember Victor and Victoria?”
Taylor blinked. “Yeah, but…are you telling me…? What are you telling me?”
“Gretchen Hart apparently now works for Glukhov. She walked into that meeting, recognized me, and gave Dragomirov her version of what happened in New Mexico.”
“Which was what?”
“Pretty close to the truth,” Will admitted.
Taylor opened his mouth but couldn’t seem to find the words. Will knew the feeling. He said wearily, “As predicted, Dragomirov doesn’t like feds. A lot. Even ex-feds. So we’re off the case. I guess he thought we were trying to set him up in some kind of sting operation.”
“What sting? We’re doing low level security work. Mall cops could have handled this gig.”
“I never said Dragomirov was a genius.”
Taylor was silent. Then he said, “How the hell would that bitch recognize you?”
Will shook his head.
Taylor’s face screwed up in anger. “Fuck!” He turned and kicked a white and blue, half-deflated child’s ball that had rolled out of the pile of trash bags. The ball shot to the left, bounced off a green brick wall and landed on the pitted pavement with a flat, angry smack.
Will said nothing. What could he say? Taylor had not wanted to take this job in the first place. But they had needed the money and Will had talked him into it. End result: they had put in ten days working a bodyguard detail for a guy who, though maybe not a crook, was certainly a scumball -- and they would not be getting paid for the privilege.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but no. He was already on defense over the Paris thing; not smart to further weaken his position. Anyway, he wasn’t going to apologize for being a realist. They were not in a position to pick and choose clients. How was he supposed to have known their arch-nemesis would show up? He hadn’t realized they had an arch-nemesis until he’d watched Gretchen Hart freeze in recognition and then morph into the Borg Queen.
Taylor turned back to face him, fists planted on his narrow hips, eyes glinting the same shade as a Mojave Green. “Fuckin’ A. What now?”
“Find a new client, I guess. Shower. Sleep.” They were short on sleep these days. It wasn’t helping.
Taylor bit back whatever he started to say. This unusual restraint was almost worse than hearing him voice his feelings.
“Look,” Will said. “I couldn’t predict this. Nobody could predict this. We’re independent contractors now, and sometimes things are going to go wrong.”
“Does that mean sometimes they’re going to go right?” Taylor inquired. “Because so far…not so much.”
Now it was Will’s turn to hold his tongue. He said shortly, “We’re done here, let’s grab our gear and get the hell out of Dodge.”
Blind Side #6
Chapter One
The razor-sharp edge between Before and After. That’s what haunted Will.
That split second between the moment when all options were still on the table, when there were still infinite possibilities as to how it could all play out, and the moment when the choice was made and consequences rolled out with the inevitability of high tide.
He hadn’t seen it coming. That was part of it. He’d been blindsided.
And the thing was, it had started out as a perfectly ordinary evening. No indication of what lay ahead. In fact, the ordinariness of it was what made it perfect.
“Why don’t we celebrate?” he’d said.
Not quite five o’clock, it was nearly dark as they crossed the wooden bridge. The damp twilight smelled of car exhaust, Mexican food, and maybe, distantly, the ocean. Colorful lights blinked and twinkled in the ragged black silhouettes of the surrounding trees. In the manmade hollow beside the Spanish-style strip mall, the miniature golf course was decorated for the holidays with fake snow and leafy garland. It looked like Santa’s Village. Quaint, cute, commercialized.
Will didn’t mind. He sort of liked the holidays, even if they typically worked straight through them. People tended to be in a better mood around the holidays, and people in better moods were a good thing in their line of work. Less bullets. More bonuses.
Taylor answered, “Sure. What did you have in mind?”
“A couple of steaks. A couple of drinks. An early night.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Taylor’s “Okay” was said absently. He probably couldn’t have read Will’s expression in the dusk anyway, but he was no longer looking at Will. He was staring ahead at their office, the last space in the mall, where a blond man in a leather jacket was exiting through a glass door that read American Eagle.
“He changed his mind,” Will commented, following Taylor’s gaze. “He doesn’t want to know she’s cheating.”
Taylor made a dismissive sound. They didn’t do cheating spouses. They weren’t PIs. They were security consultants, and as of this afternoon’s successful landing of the Webster Fidelity account, they were moving into the big leagues just like they’d been talking about since they’d left the Diplomatic Security Service to strike out on their own three months earlier.
The man in the leather jacket hesitated for a moment, aimlessly jingling the keys in his pockets, and then started toward the bridge. Technically, there was parking in the mall, but the hair salon at the opposite end guaranteed that there was rarely any available space. Will and Taylor always parked on the street.
Anyway, it was just as well this guy was bailing. Securing the Webster account solidified the fact that they were understaffed. Not as understaffed as they had been two weeks earlier when Will had persuaded Euphonia Jones to quit her job at the DMV and come work for them. But for the first time ever, they did not need another client.
As though reading his mind, Taylor said, “Maybe he’s dropping off his résumé.”
Probably not. Nothing about that slender, slightly aimless figure gave off a law-enforcement vibe.
“So. Outback? Black Angus?” Will returned to more important matters. “Aloha Steakhouse?”
“Aloha,” Taylor said. No surprise there. He did not like chain restaurants. Well, and after Paris, neither did Will.
The blond man had reached the head of the bridge and was starting toward them. His aftershave, a distinctive and disagreeable blend of musk and patchouli—what was that? Obsession?—reached them first. Taylor checked mid-stride.
The man also seemed to lose step and waver, peering forward as though trying to see through the gloom. He said doubtfully, “Taylor?”
And in a voice Will had never heard out of him before, Taylor said, “Ashe?”
He sounded—well, the cliché would be he sounded like he’d seen a ghost. But actually, he sounded like he was a ghost. The ghost of his former younger self. Taylor’s husky voice sounded lighter and uncertain, and there was just the suggestion of a boyish crack. It startled Will.
Taylor and Ashe strode toward each other, and hugged—or rather, half hugged, half collided—before stepping back to have a look at each other. Or at least as good a look as they could get in the wavering shadows of the Christmas lights.
“Taylor. It is you,” Ashe said. “I was thinking it couldn’t be. That it had to be some other Taylor MacAllister.”
“Jesus. How long has it been? What are you doing here?” Taylor was already turning to Will, making the introductions. “Will, this is Ashe Dekker. Ashe is an old friend of mine.”
Will shook Dekker’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” There wasn’t much he could add to that because until that moment, he’d never heard of Ashe Dekker.
Taylor was still talking. “Ashe, meet Will Brandt. Will’s my partner. We worked together at DS.”
“Sure,” Dekker said. “How’re you doing, Will?” His grip was firm, though his hand was ice cold.
“Great.” Will studied Dekker curiously—and felt his interest returned.
Dekker was a good-looking guy. Average height, slim, with carefully groomed stubble and the kind of shaggy haircut that actually costs a fortune. His clothes were casual and expensive: designer jeans, leather jacket, alligator skin Western boots. Will didn’t think much of guys who wore cowboy boots as a fashion statement, but he was willing to make an exception for a pal of Taylor’s.
“Taylor and I were at UCLA together,” Dekker said.
“Right,” Will said. So this was a very old friend, predating any of Taylor’s other old friends—not that Will had met so many of them, and not that Taylor had so many of them. “What brings you to our neck of the woods?”
Dekker gave a self-conscious laugh. “To be honest, I was hoping to hire you. Hire American Eagle, that is.”
Taylor said, “You need security consulting services?”
“I’m not exactly sure what I need,” Dekker said. “But I think someone’s trying to kill me.”
Euphonia was locking the front door when they arrived at the office, Ashe Dekker in tow.
“That’s okay, we’ll lock up,” Will told her.
“The painters are coming at eight. I was going to run home, have dinner, and come back.” Euphonia—Nee to her friends—was a petite black woman with a mop of bronze-gold curls and wide brown eyes. For years she had been their go-to girl at the DMV, so it had been a surprise, when they finally met in person, to discover she really was a girl. She was only in her twenties.
Regardless, she was a paragon of efficiency and ingenuity, and within the first week they had promoted her from receptionist to office manager. Not that that meant a whole hell of a lot, given there were only the three of them employed at American Eagle.
“They’ve got an access code,” Will said. “You don’t need to drive out here again.”
Euphonia smiled the smile of a woman who was going to do exactly what she thought best. She glanced past Will, spotted Dekker, and said in surprise, “Oh, you changed your mind?”
Dekker grimaced. “Yeah. Sorry for being so mysterious.” He said to Taylor, “I was here earlier. I, er, declined to fill out any paperwork.”
“That’s okay. Let’s hear your story first,” Taylor said.
“Thanks, Nee. Is your car on the street?” Will asked Euphonia.
She sighed. “No, Agent Brandt. My vehicle is located in the lot as ordered.”
“Good. And we’re not feds anymore.”
“Uh-huh. You can take a boy out of the agency, but can you take agency out of a boy?”
They were still trying to come up with an answer to that as Euphonia swept out into the damp night, the brisk click of her heels fading quickly.
“She’s been waiting to use that line on us,” Taylor commented, resting his hip on the edge of Euphonia’s terrifyingly neat desk.
“I know.” Will ripped the plastic off one of the waiting room’s two brand-new chairs, saying to Dekker, “Have a seat, Ashe.”
“I’m sure I freaked her out,” Dekker confessed, taking the chair Will indicated. “I couldn’t stop pacing up and down.”
“She used to work for the DMV. She’s freak-proof.” Taylor absently picked up a paperweight shaped like a crumpled 1040 application, raised his brows, and replaced it.
Dekker watched him. In fact, Dekker seemed to have trouble taking his eyes off Taylor. Not that Will blamed him. With his black hair, burnished green eyes, and elegant bone structure Taylor was probably Will’s favorite thing to look at.
Maybe Dekker was comparing the college kid with the man. Maybe he was wondering about that striking single strand of silver in Taylor’s hair—a souvenir of his shooting almost two years ago now. Maybe he was looking at the wedding ring on Taylor’s left hand and wondering exactly what “partner” meant.
If it was the last, good, because Taylor was definitely off-limits to Ashe Dekker.
Now that he could see Dekker in the light, Will reconsidered his original impression. The guy was attractive, true. He had that kind of bad-boy sexy vibe that Will found annoying, but that appealed to some people—Taylor maybe? His features were a little too sharp, his eyes a little too narrow, his mouth a little too thin. He looked quite a bit older than Taylor, but that could be because he was also—appeared to Will, anyway—a drinker. That slight puffiness around his pale blue eyes, the tiny broken capillaries on the tip of his otherwise perfect nose? Taylor’s dad was a drinker, so alcohol abuse was not a trait he found endearing. Although everybody had their exceptions to the rule.
It was hard picturing this guy being close to Taylor. Close enough that a decade later he felt he could call on him when he was in trouble.
Maybe that was more about Taylor than their friendship, because one thing about MacAllister: he was loyal. He was also not what you’d call a naturally gregarious guy. He had friends, of course, a few good men, as the saying went. And for the most part, those were relationships that stretched back years.
Will tuned back in to hear Dekker saying, “I’ve been living in Europe a while now. Anyway, after my mother passed, I came back to sell the beach house and found a bunch of squatters had moved in.”
“Squatters,” Will repeated, glancing automatically at Taylor.
“Right. They call themselves a family, but if they are, it’s more like the Mansons than the Brady Bunch.”
Squatters? That was the threat? That was what had driven Dekker to reach across time and tap Taylor? Will couldn’t help thinking it was kind of a flimsy excuse. Or were they now supposed to be in the trash removal business?
“What did you do?” Taylor’s attention was still focused on Dekker.
“I went through all the legal steps. Posted a three-day notice, filed an unlawful detainer, made sure they were served—”
“Made sure who was served?” Taylor interrupted. He was not the stickler for details Will was, but he liked his facts straight.
“A guy by the name of Mike Zamarion seemed to be the head man. His was the name I used for the lawsuit. He never responded, so I got a default judgment.”
“This has been going on for a while, I take it?” Will asked.
“It’s been going on for about six months.”
Will nodded.
Taylor said, “Then what happened?”
“I took that judgment to the sheriff’s department, but when the deputies went out to the beach house, everyone was gone. Their stuff was still there, though, so I figured they were hanging around, watching the place, waiting for a chance to come back.”
“Probably,” Will said. He was starting to wonder why Dekker had had second thoughts about asking for their help. Since he didn’t seem to realize this was not the kind of service they provided, it couldn’t be that. But he had changed his mind about hiring them. He had been in the process of leaving their office without giving Euphonia his contact info. If the traffic had been just a little worse, they’d have missed him and that would have been that.
Of all the nights for smooth sailing on the 101.
“The deputies went ahead and changed the locks, although I guess technically, they were only supposed to post a five-day notice. If you can believe that bullshit. I hired a company to clean out the place—which the assholes had trashed—and to dump their junk.”
“Ah.” Taylor glanced at Will. “Problematical.”
“Yep.”
In California, the laws concerning squatters vs. trespassers were a little more complicated than in some other parts of the country. Trespassing was a criminal charge and much simpler to resolve, whereas, depending on a variety of factors, squatters actually had rights and protections. Even after a formal eviction, dumping or destroying a squatter’s belongings could lead to legal problems for the property owner.
Plus, it was a shitty thing to do.
Granted, so was squatting in most cases.
“Well, I know that now,” Dekker agreed, “because Zamarion came back demanding I hand over their personal property, and when I told them everything had been carted to the dump, they threatened to burn down the house, which they tried to do a week later.”
“Are you sure—” Taylor was, by nature, a skeptic. It was one of the things Will liked about him.
“I’m sure,” Dekker said with finality. “According to the fire department, it looked like arson.”
This was getting better and better.
“Sounds to me like a case for the sheriff’s department,” Will said. Maybe working in conjunction with the fire department investigators. Maybe not. Looked like arson wasn’t exactly conclusive. What none of this sounded like was a case for a global security consulting firm.
Taylor directed an unreadable look his way.
Dekker said, “That’s what I thought too. Except the sheriff’s department says there’s nothing they can do. Even after someone ran me off the road a couple of nights ago.”
“Wait a minute. Back up.” That was Taylor. “You went to the sheriff’s department with an arson report? And told them about threats made by—”
“Zamarion. Like I said, he’s the ringleader. He claimed he’d been paying property taxes for the past two years and had a legal right to the house. He said he hadn’t received the eviction notice and that it had been illegal to change the locks and dump their belongings.”
Which, if this Zamarion guy was telling the truth, was correct.
Will said, “Ashe, I know you’re not going to want to hear it, but this is a civil matter, not a criminal one.”
That time the look Taylor threw him was one of impatience. But Will was just telling it like it was. Clearly, the sheriffs weren’t impressed by the arson report, assuming there had been one. This whole thing was a mess and a matter for the courts. It sure as hell wasn’t something they needed to be involved in—although if someone really had tried to kill Dekker…
“Did Zamarion pay the property taxes?” Taylor questioned.
“Yes, but so did I. The way it works, his payments were applied to future bills, but there won’t be any future bills because I always pay my taxes. The fact that he’s paid toward the property taxes complicates my selling the house. It’s the craziest situation.”
“You said Zamarion made threats,” Will said. “What kind of threats exactly?”
“The kind you take seriously.” Dekker’s blue eyes grew glittery with emotion. “He came to the house and told me, in front of witnesses, he’d see me dead before he’d let me force him and his so-called family out.”
“That’s a criminal threat. If he made it in front of witnesses, you can—”
“Take him to court?” Dekker’s laugh was bitter. “Sure. If the sheriffs can find him. He’s a transient. He doesn’t have a legal residence. He’s using my house as his mailing address. And if I can persuade the painters to testify—that’s another big if right there since their own legal status is questionable. In the meantime, Zamarion is going to keep on trying to kill me.”
Taylor chewed his lip, said, “Do you have proof that the person who tried to run you off the road was Zamarion?”
“You mean like a convenient snapshot of the license plate number? Hell no! I nearly went off a cliff. There wasn’t time to grab my cell phone and start snapping photos!”
“Okay.” Taylor was calm, his voice neutral. “How are you so sure Zamarion was the other driver?”
“Of course he was! Who else? He had just threatened to kill me the day before! That’s not a coincidence.”
Taylor opened his mouth, but Will cut in. “MacAllister. Can I have a word?”
“Sure.” Taylor’s tone was easy, but the look he gave Will was direct and uncompromising. Clearly, his mind was already made up.
Well, he could just unmake it.
They went through the reception area door, crossed the hall, navigating ladders and cans of paint, and stepped into the boudoir-pink room that would ultimately be Will’s office. Their building space had previously belonged to a bridal shop, and the walls were painted in delicate shades of peach and pink. Pastel wallpaper borders featured parasols (why parasols?) and wedding cakes and lovebirds nibbling gold bands. None of which projected the appropriate YOUR SAFETY IS IN OUR HANDS! vibe—or even, in Will’s view, a reassuring preview of marriage.
They were hoping to have the renovations finished before the end of the year, but the holidays turned out to be an unexpectedly busy time for contractors. Most of the work at American Eagle was having to be done after-hours—and at a premium price.
Will closed the door to his office. He kept his voice low. “Okay, listen. Dekker is a friend, and I understand that you want to help him, but this is clearly a case for the sheriffs.”
“Sure,” Taylor replied. “That doesn’t mean we can’t take a look around, ask a few questions.”
Will didn’t trust that reasonable tone. “Yes. If that’s all you’re talking about. Because we’ve got to be realistic. You know as well as I do, we’re not in a position to take on another client.”
Taylor shrugged dismissively. “If you don’t want to take Ashe on as a client, that’s okay with me. I wasn’t planning on billing him. I’ll handle this as a favor. In my spare time.”
This was exactly what Will had feared. Taylor had not only already made his mind up, he was busily working out the details before they could even finish identifying what those details might be.
He tried very hard to keep his exasperation from showing. “What spare time? You don’t have spare time. Neither of us do.”
“What’s your point, Will?” Taylor rested his hand on his canted hip, and studied him with cool, green eyes.
That—in fairness, unconsciously—cocky posture, that skeptical really? stare, were the reason so many people longed to punch Taylor five seconds after meeting him. It wasn’t really who Taylor was. Or rather, yeah, the confidence, the cynicism, were facets of his personality, but not the main facets, and not traits he typically turned on Will.
Obviously, this was a unique case, and Will needed to respect that. Which he was trying to do.
He said, “All I’m saying is, doesn’t it make more sense—isn’t it better for all of us—if we direct Dekker back to the sheriff’s department? And if you don’t feel like that’s enough, we can refer him to another—”
Taylor cut him off. “Uh-uh. We’re not referring him anywhere. Ashe came to me.”
“I know that. That’s why I’m saying—”
“I gave Ashe my word that if he ever needed help, I’d be there. I didn’t say, if you ever need help, I can refer you to someone. I promised I’d be there for him.”
“I get that.” Will did. It would be unreasonable to be irritated with Taylor for making those kinds of promises years before they’d ever met. He wasn’t irritated, and he definitely wasn’t jealous—he didn’t think—but Christ, Taylor could be so bullheaded.
“Do you?” There it was. That hint of cynical smile. “Because that’s not what I’m hearing.”
“What you’re hearing is me trying to work out what’s going to be best for all of us. We’re not bodyguards—”
“We’ve handled plenty of protection details, so don’t give me that. What’s your real beef?”
“My real beef is not two hours ago we landed the kind of job we’ve been hunting since we left the DS, and we both know we don’t actually have the manpower to carry it off.”
“So we’re going to be stretched thin. We should be used to that by now.”
“So, taking on another job—one that’s liable to be as time-consuming and distracting as this one sounds—is not smart.” He shook his head.
“It’ll take a day. Two at most.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“The hell. You think I can’t handle tracking down this Zamarion guy?”
“Of course I don’t think that. But come on, you know what this is going to be. Chasing smoke in the wind.”
“I know.”
“Then you admit it’s not an efficient use of our resources.”
Taylor opened his mouth, and Will added, “And while we’re on the topic of resources, I thought you were frantic to pay Richard back? Just this morning you said again how much you didn’t want to be in debt to him. Which is all the more reason not to take on a pro-bono gig that’s liable to jeopardize the first job we’ve had that might allow us to start paying off that debt.”
Everything Will was saying was true, so it was maddening to have Taylor keep looking at him with that skeptical expression like…what? What did think was really motivating Will?
“I see,” Taylor drawled. “If David Bradley came to us for help, you’d just give him the name of a good local firm and send him on his way?”
Will felt himself change color. “It’s not the same situation. David is—was—”
He stopped, realizing he was wading into quicksand.
Brows arched in pointed inquiry, Taylor said mildly, “David is—was—?”
“David is our friend—”
“He’s no friend of mine.”
“He’s not someone from my distant past asking for a favor. And anyway, I’d have to tell David the same thing I’m telling you now. We don’t have the resources to handle this.”
“Bullshit.”
Somehow the quietness of that was more jarring than if Taylor had shouted at him. “If David Fucking Bradley came through that door, asking for your help, you’d move heaven and earth to give it to him. We both know it. And guess what? I understand that. I even respect it. Which is why I expect you to understand and respect my position. I’m not asking you to put in extra hours. I’ll handle this on my own. And I’ll make damn sure that it doesn’t interfere with the Webster Fidelity job. Okay? Fair enough?”
No, it was not okay, it was not fair. It was foolish and impractical. But after Taylor invoked David’s name, what else could Will say? No way in hell could he risk arguing with Taylor about David, and clearly that’s where this conversation was headed.
Will said curtly, “Fair enough.”
Taylor nodded, yanked open the door, and they walked in silence back into the front office. They found Ashe scrutinizing a stack of framed photos. He looked up with an expression of hope mixed with wariness, and set aside a seven-year-old picture of Will accepting his marksmanship qualification badge.
“Okay,” Taylor told him. “We talked it over. We’re taking your case.”
“You are?” Ashe threw a quick, doubtful look at Will.
“Yes,” Will said.
Ashe still seemed unsure. “If this isn’t the kind of thing you do—”
“We do whatever needs doing,” Taylor said.
“It’s our company’s slogan,” Will said sardonically. “We’re going to get it printed on coffee mugs.”
Taylor gave him an unamused look before saying to Dekker, “Where are you staying?”
“The beach house. Carpinteria.”
“Okay, I’ll drive up first thing tomorrow and take a look around. You can fill me in on the rest of the story. We’ll start there and see where it leads us.”
“That’s… I don’t know what to say. Thank you,” Dekker said, with another of those slightly ill-at-ease glances at Will. “Thank you both.”
He did seem thankful. But Will couldn’t help thinking Dekker also seemed more scared than when he’d first walked into their office.
Bestselling author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure and unapologetic man-on-man romance, JOSH LANYON has been called "the Agatha Christie of gay mystery."
Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).
The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.
Josh is married and they live in Southern California.Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).
The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.
SMASHWORDS / iTUNES / SHELFARI
EMAIL: josh.lanyon@sbcglobal.net
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Blood Heat #3
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Kick Start #5
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