David scrambled to his feet and marched out of the water.
Chris stalked after him as he scooped up his own shorts and pulled them on, followed by his T-shirt. He shook the sand out of his towel, while Chris got dressed. Chris was about to head back to the road that would take them to Aunt Nea’s, when David put his hand on Chris’s arm.
“Wait,” he said.
Before Chris could speak, he snapped several images in a row
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of the staring cops. Finally, he guided Chris toward the roadway.
“Go on,” he said. “Let’s see what our buddies in blue want.”
“As if you don’t know.”
The two of them stepped onto the road to find the cops still there, watching. Two patrol cars sat side by side in the nearly empty parking lot. Through their open windows David could hear the chatter of staccato voices over the police radio.
Chris made to pass them, but David wasn’t backing down this time. He stopped and took two more pictures, making sure he captured each constable. He could tell it pissed them off. He strode up to the nearest cop and planted himself in front of the older black man he assumed was the senior constable.
“Help you, Officer?”
The few people in the park, including the kite fliers, had been drawn to the scene. David pretended to ignore them, but he knew the cops were all too aware of their audience. It might not have gone as well for him and Chris if there’d been no witnesses.
Chris came up behind him; he remained silent, but David could feel his growing anger.
“Can I ask what you are doing here?” the older officer asked.
His partner stared through his shades. He eyed the digital camera dangling from David’s hand. “You got pornography on that thing?”
David knew he didn’t have to answer, but he also knew better than to antagonize the local law any more than he had to. “No,” he said, making to hand the camera over. “Unless you call a couple of mutts harassing innocent tourists porno.” He withdrew his hand, pulling the camera out of reach. “You want to look? Come back with a warrant.”
“Where are you staying?”
David inclined his head toward town. “Aunt Nea’s.”
The younger cop smirked. “The fag hotel.”
David hadn’t heard it called that before. More enlightenment.
“Want me to prove it?”
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The cop’s smirk became a leer. He took his sunglasses off.
His irises were a startling blue-gray. His gaze slid over Chris, then back to David. His eyes were cold, like the stormy Atlantic off the coast of Provincetown. “No, that won’t be necessary. Have a good day, gentlemen.”
The pair sauntered back to their patrol cars. The younger constable with the storm-colored eyes was a burly guy with a shock of red hair. He leaned against the hood of his car and watched Chris and David. His partner was speaking through his two-way. Looking for outstanding warrants?
David jerked away from the probing gaze and, touching Chris’s back, indicated it was time to go. They walked stiffly up the road to Aunt Nea’s. Both patrol cars passed them on Government Hill Road, driving slowly, their windows open.
David ignored them. They waited for the cars to vanish west, before crossing the street. “No sense letting them give us jaywalking tickets,” David muttered.
They were in a much more somber mood when they finally climbed the steps to their room.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Chris shut and locked the door behind him. “Aren’t you afraid of pissing them off?”
“What more can they do to us?”
Chris threw his wet T-shirt on the bathroom floor in a fit of pique. “Is that what we have to face until this is over? Constant intimidation?”
“They’re slick, not doing enough to raise harassment charges, but enough to let us know they’re watching. They must have seen us go into the park, so they decided to check us out.”
“Don’t they have better things to do?”
“They don’t think so.”
David scooped up Chris’s dirty clothes and added his own to the laundry basket. Chris had bought some laundry soap in his last shopping foray. David added it to the pile now and trudged down the stairs to the laundry room. Chris trailed after him.
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“Why aren’t you mad?”
David looked up from filling the washing machine. “What makes you think I’m not?”
“I’m spitting—”
“I can tell,” David said. “That working for you?”
“Working how?”
“Is it making you feel any better?”
“Well, no, of course not…”
“So the only one you’re hurting is you. You’ll make yourself sick, letting them get to you. Trust me; they’d like that just fine.”
Chris made a face at him. “You’re so bloody smart.”
Back upstairs Chris transferred his images to the laptop, clearing the camera’s memory. Then his BlackBerry vibrated on the bedside table. He answered it. After listening for a minute, Chris said, “Trust me, hon, no one could ever forget you.” Chris rolled his eyes and mouthed the word “Des.” David grinned and sighed. It was way too early to have to deal with Des and his Beverly Hills hysterics.
Chris handed David the BlackBerry. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Hey, Des,” David said.
Des sounded breathless. “I’ve been waiting for you to call.
You’re such a beast, forgetting all about me.”
“I never forgot you, Des.”
Des sniffed. “So have you put those island bumpkins in their place?”
David switched the BlackBerry from one ear to the other.
“We’re working on it. Consider it a work in progress.”
“I hope Chris got you a good lawyer.”
“Oh, I think he got me a good one.” David shared a warm glance with Chris. “Don’t worry about us, we’ll be okay.”
“You better be. I want you both back here soon. I told Chris BeRMudA heAt
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you shouldn’t have gone. I told him it wasn’t a nice place.”
“We’ll be okay. I promise. Have I ever broken a promise to you, Des?”
“Well, no…”
“Have a little faith,” David said. “I’m not going anywhere except home. Count on it.”
“Well, I know where to find you if you’re wrong.”
David laughed and handed the BlackBerry back to Chris, who talked a few more minutes, then rejoined David.
“What else did you pick up for us to eat?” David asked.
“I got some pasta. I can put together an Alfredo sauce if you’re interested. Or I got some salmon steaks.”
“Pasta.” David picked through some grapes Chris had set out on the counter. “Can I help?”
“Grab the pasta, I’ll get the sauce going.”
Over dinner David was thoughtful. Finally he put his fork down and asked, “Have you had any chance to think about what I said? On the plane ride over?”
Chris seemed to know immediately what he meant. “About leaving the LAPD? Yeah, I’ve thought about it, a lot.”
“And?”
Chris sipped his wine, twirling the Sauvignon Blanc around in the glass. “I think you should do what you want,” he finally said.
“You’re a damn good cop and if that’s what you want to be, I support you one hundred percent.”
David was skeptical. “Yeah? I thought you hated it.”
“I don’t hate it. I’m scared for you. I don’t want to get a phone call from Martinez some night that you’ve been shot, maybe dead.” Chris shivered. “But I also know that could happen anywhere, anytime. Hell, look where we live. There’s no guarantees even if you became an accountant that some act of random violence wouldn’t hit you.”
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“An accountant?” David made a face. “I’d die all right. Of boredom.”
“I’m sure even accountants can be hot and sexy.”
“You haven’t met many accountants, have you?”
Chris laughed. He reached across the table and took David’s hand. His eyes darkened when he said, “No, but I do know one very hot and very sexy homicide detective. Maybe you know him? I found him and brought him home and I plan on keeping him, for forever and ever.” Chris raised his hand and kissed it, then sighed, growing serious again. “The bottom line is, you love being a cop, and if becoming a private investigator is only on account of me, then don’t do it. I want you to do what makes you happy. Honest. Don’t compromise that just for me. I don’t want you resenting me.” He let his fingers dance up David’s muscular chest. “I can think of a dozen other ways you can make me happy.”
David squeezed his hand and raised it to his mouth.
After supper Chris wanted to go swimming one more time.
David sat on the beach reading his book. He glanced occasionally at Chris, noting how brown he had become from a few days of lazing in the sun. If anything it made him even more beautiful.
Too beautiful for mere words, and David still didn’t understand what Chris saw in an aging, beat-up cop like himself. Finally, as the sun slipped behind the screen of ice plants and casuarina trees, they returned to their room. David flipped on the TV and found a local news broadcast. Chris brought in a Bud for David and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc for himself.
They were still talking about the tropical storm Fay heading toward Bermuda. The prediction now was that it might make landfall by Saturday.
“And we can’t leave even if we wanted to,” Chris said. He sprawled out on top of the flowered comforter, his wine on the table beside him.
“We’re fine if we stay inside,” David said. “This place is pretty solid. Remember what the cabbie said, these homes don’t blow BeRMudA heAt
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down.”
“It would be a lot safer if we were watching it from Los Angeles. Makes me miss the earthquakes.”
“Are you forgetting the floods the fires? And let’s not overlook the mudslides? The bumper-to-bumper gridlock every morning and every night?”
“Yeah, but those are disasters I’m used to.”
When the news ended they got undressed and climbed under the blankets. David spooned Chris’s body and stroked his still sun-warmed topaz skin with his lips. He rolled Chris over and began to kiss his hairless chest, moving lower, while Chris held his head in shaking hands.
Chris groaned. “David…”
“You want hot and sexy,” David growled, pressing his mouth against Chris’s navel. “I’ll give you—”
There was a furious pounding on the door. They broke apart, fumbling to throw the sheets off and grab their robes. The knocking didn’t let up. Whoever it was wasn’t going away any time soon.
“We’re coming, we’re coming,” David roared as he threw open the door.
Two uniformed constables and Detective Sergeant MacClellan stood in the doorway.
Friday, 11:40am Aunt Nea’s, Nea’s Alley, St. George’s Parish,
Bermuda
It was the two constables from the Tobacco Bay beach park.
They’d taken off their sunglasses and they watched the two Americans in front of them with open contempt.
Chris steadied himself on David’s arm, his fingers dimpling his skin. His husband froze, his face blank, only the whiteness at the corners of his mouth giving away his tension.
“I guess maybe they came back to give us that jaywalking ticket,” Chris said. God was that lame. He bit his lip when all three cops studied him with disdain.
“This isn’t good, is it?” he whispered to David.
The cops pushed passed them into the suddenly too small room. They took in Chris and David’s bare legs, the rumpled bed and crushed pillows; their fading erections under their dressing gowns.
David addressed one of the men. “What is it now, Sergeant MacClellan?”
Chris shivered, wishing he could step out from under their contemptuous eyes. Wishing he could shield himself with some real clothes.
“Did we disturb you?” MacClellan’s voice held a wealth of sarcasm. One of his constables snickered. MacClellan looked around the small room. “What, no camera to record your diddling each other for future entertainment? And I thought all you people were perverts.”
“Do I need to call my lawyer?” David’s voice dripped ice.
He grabbed his jeans off the floor and searched for the pocket.
Before he could find whatever he was looking for, the two
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constables secured his arms and hauled him toward the bed, brushing past Chris.
“Hands over your head. Lace your fingers together. On the floor, Laine, now,” MacClellan barked. David hesitated. “Now.”
Chris lunged forward, but one of the constables, the barrel-chested redhead, stepped in front of him, arms folded over his chest. Chris froze. For the first time he felt fear.
The other constable, the older Black man, picked up the digital camera and Chris’s laptop from the table.
“What the hell is going on? What are you doing with that?” Chris asked. His hands itched to wipe that smirk off the constable’s face. “You can’t just barge in here and harass us—”
“Your precious little pansy friend is going back to jail where he belongs,” MacClellan said. There was a dark glee on his face.
“B-but I don’t understand,” Chris stammered as they shoved David flat on the floor and secured his wrists with handcuffs.
“You’re hurting him!”
“Call Aidan, Chris,” David growled, his jaws clenched tight, his face averted from the cops. “Tell him…” He looked at each cop in turn. “Tell him MacClellan and his goons have arrested me again.”
“What’s the charge? You have to tell him what he’s being charged with—what are you, barbarians?”
“No, Mr. Pansy,” MacClellan said. “We’re not barbarians, though I’m beginning to think your sweetheart is. First he kills an old man, now he’s trying to take out the rest of the family.
And God knows what kind of filth is on this,” he indicated to the laptop and camera, which one of his constables now held.
“Enough to nail
your
ass to the wall, I’m sure.”
Chris felt the blood drain from his face. “What? Who was hurt?” His mind flashed on Imani. Oh God, no—
“The oldest son, Mr. Jayvyn Daniel Cameron was strangled to death outside a bar on Court Street.”
“What time?” Chris asked.
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