Authors: Rhys Ford
“Survivors….”
“Going in.” Dante motioned to the townhomes. “Stay here if you need to.”
“Fuck that.
Go
,” Hank ordered, his neck muscles bulging as he screamed to be heard through the noise around them. “Right behind you, Montoya.”
Dante went in at a full run, ignoring the hitch of pain along his leg and ribs as he mounted the cracked steps to the townhouses’ raised entrances. Not much was left of the cookie-cutter building, but Dante spotted a pale hand sticking up out of a pile of rubble near a fallen staircase. A quick glance at the townhouse’s ironically intact front door, and he made a connection to the address and the woman they’d come to look for.
“
Mierda
.” Dante waded into the falling debris, carefully picking his way to the lifeless limb a few feet away. “For fuck’s sake, please don’t be dead, Debbie Pridgeon. We need a goddamned break. Just one goddamned break.”
There was someone singing.
It wasn’t bad singing, just…
odd
. Especially since Rook didn’t know anyone who liked ’80s pop classics, much less knew about being like a virgin. Whoever was singing decided the song needed less bubble gum and more heat, because the lyrics snaked in and out of the singer’s lower register, adding a growling camp to its melody.
He wasn’t home. That much was certain. The light was very wrong, too little of it, and the wall he could make out was painted a soothing light green some asshole with a design degree would call celery. The bed wasn’t as comfortable, but the pillows were nice and soft. He was wearing a much too large T-shirt and sweatpants, definitely not something he’d had on before he’d drugged himself to unconsciousness. They were freshly washed and a soft cotton purr over his traumatized skin.
Hotel—Rook remembered. A much more familiar smell to him than his own home, but there he was, confused by the strangeness of the light and walls.
Oddly, he also smelled of… sex. And when he moved, Rook definitely felt as if he’d broken his long dry spell.
He smelled of Dante Montoya.
A soft-bodied Mexican man with Dante’s smile shuffled up to the bed. It took a moment before Rook remembered the man’s name—Manny, Dante’s uncle and his apparent babysitter. A babysitter with a paper cup of something delicious smelling in his hands.
“Coffee?” Rook croaked, nodding at the cup. “God, I’m throwing Dante over for you.”
“Ah, now I know you hit your head.” Manny chuckled. “Do you need help up?”
“No, I’m good.” He slid across the bed, testing his body’s reactions.
There was tenderness in some areas and a pulling along his arm, but for the most part, everything seemed in working order. It still felt like he’d been hit by something larger than a breadbox on wheels, but nothing screamed in crippling agony. His bladder did send up a warning flag, and any stiffness his dick might have had on waking up was shaken off by the pressing need to piss.
“Bathroom?” Manny caught Rook’s arm as he slid off the bed. “Do you need help?”
“Doesn’t hurt like it did when I first got up.” The thick carpet beneath his feet poked up between Rook’s toes. “Thanks, though. Be right back.”
“There’s toiletries in the bathroom if you want to take a shower. Dante made sure you had clothes to change into. But
mijo
, leave the door open a crack just in case you need help, okay?”
The older man’s tender expression broke through Rook’s stubborn instinctive response to lock the door behind him.
“If you fall, I want to be able to help you.”
“Yeah, sure.” With that, Rook left the bathroom door open an inch, then began to strip off the sweatpants he’d somehow gained in the middle of his minicoma.
Manny disarmed him. His body language was gentle, a sure sign of gullible and trusting, but there was a steely glimmer in his dark brown eyes, a remnant of battles fought and won. A curious blend of masculinity and feminine grace, Dante’s uncle was definitely not a mark, and as Rook contemplated how he’d have approached Manny before he’d gone straight, he’d have avoided the man like the plague.
The man puttering around in the hotel room a few feet away was the kind of mark that made someone lose their way in a con, reminding the player of their humanity and probably stalwart enough to jump-start even the deadest conscience.
Showering was a slow and painful process. At some point, Manny cracked open the door and put spare clothes on the counter, but Rook only saw an outline through the shower’s steamed-up frosted glass walls. The heat helped loosen the last of the tightness across his shoulders, and he tentatively scrubbed over his stitches and bruises, washing away the traces of blood on his arm he’d probably earned from stretching his wound too far when he’d tackled Dante.
“Fuck, what was I thinking?” Leaning his forehead against the tile wall, Rook let the multiheaded shower pound his back into submission. “Gotta cut him loose or something. Shit. A cop? Really? A fucking cop. Why not just frog jump over and fuck someone in the FBI or Homeland Security? Oh, I know, a judge! Let’s go full out and fuck a guy in robes and call it a day.”
Because Dante Montoya hits all my damned buttons
, his brain whispered back.
He didn’t want Montoya—Dante. He didn’t want any of the crap Dante would bring into his life if he let him in. Each smile, every touch was another thread wrapped around his dick and balls until he wouldn’t be able to move without Dante yanking on a leash Rook’d made for himself.
“Great, now I’ve got a goddamned fantasy of Montoya having me on a leash,” Rook grumbled to himself. “Where the fuck did
that
come from?”
There were four ibuprofen and a bottle of water with the clean clothes Manny’d left on the counter, and he gulped them down. Padding out barefoot, Rook pulled the drawstrings of the sweats he’d been given as tight as they could go, then gave up when they rode down onto his hip bones.
And somehow in the time it’d taken him to shower, scrub his hair clean, and dress, Manny’d gotten housekeeping to change the bed and deliver a quesadilla and fries. The food set up on the coffee table smelled good, and Rook’s stomach growl as Manny pushed him toward the table.
“Mine?” Rook plucked up a fry, blowing on it to cool off its steaming surface. “Because, dude, seriously, two of my favorite foods in the world.”
Manny settled into an armchair, then reached for a mug on the table. “Yours. And there is more coffee.”
“Okay, it’s official. Dante’s to the curb,” Rook mumbled around a hot potato wedge dipped in jalapeno ranch dressing. “I only have room in my heart for one Montoya.”
“Well, lucky for you I am not a Montoya. It’s Hernandez. I’m Dante’s mother’s brother.” Manny shooed Rook to the couch with a flip of his hand. “Sit. It’s not good for you to eat while standing up. And as you eat, you can tell me how my nephew went from hating your guts to having sex with you in a five-star hotel.”
Rook choked on a fry.
There were tears and then a raw scratchiness he should have gotten from swallowing Dante’s cock, but instead, the abrasiveness on the tender walls of his throat was from a goddamned potato.
And Dante’s uncle, Manny, merely sat there watching him, a smiling Mexican Buddha sipping a cup of steaming coffee.
Rook tried to play it off, smoothing the potato’s passage with a slurp of hot coffee. He cleared his passageway with a discreet cough, then smiled back at his interrogator. “So, he hated me, huh?”
“Maybe,” Manny said slyly. “You tell me why else he has all of the files from your old case? He was mad at you, at everyone you were with back then, and now he’s looking at you like you are the last piece of pumpkin pie.”
“Huh.” He bolted down another fry, then picked at the quesadilla. His stomach was rebelling at the thought of fried cheese and tortilla, and the potatoes were a heavy lump beneath a wash of coffee. “I figured after the case was dropped, he didn’t give me another thought.”
“That is something you’ll have to bring up with him. Dante has never walked away from anything—even his family. Even me when I was… well, things happen. But he is always there. He’s a good boy—a good man.”
“Yeah, that’s the truth. Too fucking good.” Rook slid back against the couch. “Don’t get too used to me. Pretty sure once this whole thing is done, he’ll go back to… whatever it was he was doing before he ran into me again. I’m not exactly a guy you bring home to meet your mom and dad.”
“In Dante’s case, I
am
his mom and dad.” Manny saluted Rook with his coffee cup.
Coffee seemed like a good idea, but then at that point, Rook was seriously considering faking his own death to avoid the knowing look in Manny’s soulful eyes. “Is this where you ask me what my intentions are toward your nephew?”
“I know what his intentions are. He likes you. He didn’t always like you, but he’s always wanted you. Now he has you—”
“Had. Past tense, ’
mano
,” Rook pointed out. “Not looking for a ring and kids here. Shit, I don’t even want to know where you guys live.”
“We’ll see.” Manny patted the couch cushion. “Come here so I can put some cream on your stitches. Dante told me the hospital wants to make sure it is clean and covered. There’s also more pills for you to take besides the ibuprofen. Antibiotics, I think, but it’s almost time for pain medication if you want it.”
“Antibiotics I’ll take.” The effects of the hot water were wearing off, and Rook found a cold stiffness had moved into his joints while he’d been sitting. “I’m okay right now, hurt wise. Just stiff.”
“You
were
hit by a car,
mijo
,” Manny reminded him gently. “
And
shot. No one’s going to think you’re weak because you take a pill to ease the pain.”
“It’s not being macho. I just don’t like passing out. Makes me feel like I’m in one of those historical romances where women swoon because someone swears.” Rook snorted. “I also pass out when I see blood. Usually mine, but I’ve been known to make exceptions. If I have a choice of fainting or running when cops start shooting at me, the chicken-lizard part of my brain apparently chooses
get-the-fuck-out-of-here
every time.”
Manny waved a tube of ointment at him. “Come on. Let me see.”
“‘It puts the lotion on its skin.’” Rook slid over to sit next to the older man, staring at the blank look on Manny’s face. “Does
no one
in your family watch movies?”
“Mostly, I read.” Manny pulled up Rook’s sleeve, then sighed. “Did you not see the bandage I left for you on the counter?”
“I don’t like bandages. Skin’s got to breathe to heal.” He deflected Manny’s skeptical look. “Trust me, spend some time on the circuit, and you see the kind of shit people do to themselves. If you can’t see what’s going on, it gets all gross and you die.”
Manny’s look went from skeptical to disgusted. “I worry about the woman who raised you.”
“Dude, Beanie’s the last person I’d want to kiss and make anything better.” The lotion was cold on his skin, and Manny’s fingers gently skimmed the wound. “I know some of the places her mouth’s been.”
Manny went in for the kill, but unlike Dante, the stab in was slow and subtle. “You call your mother Beanie? It’s your mother, right?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t say Beatrice.” Rook tilted his head back, trying to read the man’s next move.
It was harder to game someone when he didn’t have a purpose. The whole point of interaction was to manipulate the outcome in his favor. Without an endgame, Rook knew he was floundering. He couldn’t go on the offensive—no reason to alienate Manny other than on general principles, but Dante’s uncle seemed unshakeable.
“What circuit? I used to do shows—a long time ago, before I got sick—but most of it was on stage. I guess you traveled?”
Manny slid the conversation in another direction, and Rook skipped a few thoughts to catch up.
“Circus or something? Do people really do that?”
“Carnival.” Rook huffed in a breath when Manny touched a tender spot. “Beanie was looking more for… I don’t really know what… but she hooked into a sideshow and carnival.”
“And your father?”
“Anyone’s guess. Beanie doesn’t even try.” He shrugged off Manny’s concerned frown. “Dude, not an issue. Carnies kind of take care of their own. If anything, Beanie squatting to drop me in horse-shit sawdust gave me more cred than she could ever get living on the circuit for fifty years. Life wasn’t so bad.”
Manny absorbed Rook’s words. “Did you go to school?”
“Define school.” He laughed. “Sort of. Yeah. There’s programs where you do schoolwork and send it in. Lots of that. I didn’t do too bad. Got a GED somewhere. Not like I was planning on going to college.”
“What were you planning?” Dante’s uncle patted at the edges of Rook’s stitches with a piece of gauze. “Did you think you were going to be a criminal? Or did someone there make you do it?”
“Let’s get one thing straight, dude.” Rook shoved his sleeve back down. “I knew what I was getting into. I knew what I was doing. Hell, I was good at it. Probably still am. I don’t get lazy. I’ve had to be ready to walk away from everything all of my life. Stealing’s what I’m good at. I keep limber and make sure I can hold my own weight on a line. Probably was the only thing that saved me when that car hit me.”
“Probably,” Manny conceded. The man’s face went flat, nearly unreadable behind the sweet vulnerability he wore almost as a habit. “But don’t you get tired of walking away from everything?”
“Only reason I stayed. Everything I’ve got now, I’ve earned.” The fries were cold, but Rook picked at them anyway. Jalapeno ranch dressing went a long way in forgiving a food’s sins. “So maybe that’s the whole karma thing coming to bite me in the ass, because it sure as hell feels like someone’s trying to take away everything I’ve built… so fuck it, I’m staying.”
“And my nephew? How does he fit into this new life of yours?” Manny prodded, handing Rook a large adhesive. “Because now you’re not running away from anything, you can have a home. A family. All of it.”