Holding Out for a Fairy Tale (14 page)

“He was being nice because you’re a girl,” said the first detective. “I saw him spend twenty minutes screaming at some poor guy from traffic who was assisting at a scene. The kid fucked up his chain of custody on a cigarette butt or something, and he nearly put the kid’s head through a wall. If you get on his good side, he’ll have your back through anything, but if you don’t make a good first impression…. Ah, never mind, I take it back. He’s an ass even if you get on his good side.”

“Well, ass or not, I need him alive.” Elliot managed a resigned smile. He’d caught a few glimpses of Ray’s reactions to what he perceived to be incompetence, and he knew that Ray’s coworkers weren’t exaggerating. At the time, he’d thought it was just because his partner was in trouble, but when the fallout from that case began to settle, he had learned just how wrong he was. Ray’s reaction hadn’t been especially harsh because his partner was in trouble, it had been toned-down because he’d been distracted by the fact that the
man he loved
was in trouble. Ray was often insensitive and cold, and the fact that he was almost always right was infuriating.

Elliot was beginning to see that, behind his flirtatious smile and the scathing criticism, Ray Delgado’s life was defined by absolutes. Elliot doubted any officers except the people on his team knew how seriously Delgado took his job, and he’d bet none of them knew why he was so dedicated. Delgado’s decision to devote his life to working against his extended family left him in a position where any attachments he formed made him vulnerable, where any mistakes he made could prove deadly. He lived each day of his life with the very real fear that the next time he saw a member of his own family, he may have to kill or arrest them. Everyone he had grown up believing he could depend on had become an enemy. Anyone he became attached to would just become a liability. Becoming a detail-obsessed asshole was probably the reason Ray was still alive.

He glanced toward the small office door with a bronze nameplate that had nothing but the name
Jenkins
on it. Ray had been inside the office for over an hour now. Elliot had seen him pacing, gesturing wildly, and sitting down with his head cradled in his hands. The old man behind the desk had hardly moved. Elliot hadn’t seen his lips move either, and he was beginning to wonder if the captain had said anything at all.

“Think they’re going to be much longer?” he asked.

“That’s up to Delgado.” The detective who had been sharing stories of Ray’s many practical jokes over the years glanced through the window. “He talked himself into being suspended last time.”

“Huh?”

“Captain Jenkins knows how to deal with Delgado. He just lets Delgado rant about what happened, lets Delgado explain why he was wrong, what he thinks his punishment should be, and why he shouldn’t be fired. I think Delgado even typed his own write-up last time around.”

“Really?” Elliot hopped off Ray’s desk and studied the captain closely through the glass wall separating them. The old man occasionally narrowed his eyes, but he wasn’t saying anything. The more he stared at Ray, the more Ray filled in on his own. “That’s impressive.”

The detective nodded. The radio clipped to his collar buzzed to life and he turned away to respond. The charge room echoed with radio traffic, and all at once, the officers who had been chatting with him were racing out the door, leaving Elliot alone. Since it was a specialty division, there was no duty officer left behind to man the office. Inside the captain’s office, the old man behind the desk was up and moving, too. He was on his feet and talking quickly into the phone. For the first time in an hour, Ray was quiet and still.

The old captain hurried out a moment later, nodding to Elliot as he passed. Ray shuffled behind him, running his hands through his hair. “Can I get Hathaway’s cell number from you? Apparently I get to submit to the FBI’s short-term protection scheme or get transferred back to the patrol division.”

“Did your captain suggest that?” Elliot smirked. “Or did he wait for you to do it yourself?”

“Fuck you, man.”

Elliot shoved Ray toward the door. “Come on. Hanging out with me should work just as well as hanging out with Hathaway, and I’m less likely to kill you.”

“Uh, I don’t have anything. Not my phone charger, my car, or my clothes. Can we stop by a store on the way?”

Elliot shook his head slowly and shoved Ray toward the door. “No. It’s nearly midnight. There’s food at my place, and my clothes will fit you better than me.”

Ray kicked his own desk. The finish was scuffed where he kicked it, and Elliot guessed it was probably the usual target of Ray’s frustrations.

“Come on.”

“You know the crap in your kitchen doesn’t count as food. And as for your clothes….”

“My clothes aren’t good enough for you?”

“Your clothes aren’t good enough for
you
. They’d be fine for me. You should get your shit tailored.” Ray’s gaze travelled up and down Elliot’s body suggestively. “Or just go naked.”

“Maybe if you ask politely,” said Elliot.

Ray turned a wide-eyed smile at him, then hurried ahead of him toward the elevator.

On the way home, Ray was silent, and out of the corner of his eye, Elliot saw his head droop. The other man’s gurgling stomach reminded him that they both needed food, along with showers and clean clothes, before this night could finally end. But Ray was all but dead to the world in the car, and Elliot was surprised when he made it into the house under his own power.

He left Ray sitting on the couch while he rinsed off and changed out of his workout clothes, and when he was finished, he steered Ray into the bathroom and hoped for the best.

He leaned close to the bathroom door. “I’m going to order some food!”

The only answer was the shower starting again.

Elliot had a routine. He usually got home way too late, opened up his empty fridge and stared at the shelves for a few minutes, then ordered pizza. This time, though, he found that the top shelf of his fridge was full. He had vegetables, turkey, and even cheese. “Ray went shopping,” he reminded himself.

He threw together a couple of quick sandwiches and then tried to remember which of the boxes he hadn’t unpacked yet had extra blankets and linens. After three tries, Elliot found a clean set of sheets and a blanket. He pulled an extra pillow from his own bed and set the whole bundle on the couch. He loved his couch almost as much as his bed. They were the only pieces of furniture he’d left in storage when he was assigned to what he expected was the middle of nowhere in northwestern Montana two years ago. Since he’d lived in a tiny apartment before that, and a tiny apartment during that assignment, he didn’t have enough stuff to fill up the twelve-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom home he’d bought this time around. He didn’t dare buy anything new yet, though. His mother’s weekly e-mails each ended—after a dozen detailed paragraphs about his uncles, their children, and how the family restaurant was doing—with a promise to fly down and help him get settled in. The only other time his mother had helped him get settled into a new place, she and his uncle had arrived with a moving truck filled with all of the extra furniture his parents, uncles, neighbors, and random customers had on hand to donate. The last thing he needed was to try to fit enough mismatched furniture for a five-bedroom house into his living room, again.

If he was going to be stuck with Ray until this case was over, he was going to have to pick up curtains, and maybe an air mattress, too. He would also have to find a way to ease some of the tension mounting inside him and start keeping his migraine medication on him, because he could feel another headache creeping up on him. Exhaustion and stress tended to magnify the effect of things that normally triggered his migraines.

Dehydration and low blood sugar were two of his worst triggers, and if the only way he could keep from jumping Ray was to work out until his muscles trembled and threatened to fail, he was in for more headaches. He casually grabbed an Imitrex needle from his medicine drawer and slipped it and his pills into his suit jacket. He took another injectable cartridge out and shot it into his arm, then dropped the empty cartridge into the trash. Since he wasn’t in the middle of a migraine yet, the medication would stop the headache in its tracks.

Elliot stretched his arms over his head and then bent down to ease the kinks out of his lower back. He hung there, bent at the waist, and folded his arms over the top of his head. He let his forehead rest against his shins and stayed there as some of the tension drained from his muscles. He rolled up slowly, then twisted to either side to try to stave off the muscle aches that were already settling into his shoulders. After, he slumped to the counter where half of his turkey sandwich sat on a plate, next to the one he’d made for Ray. He took another bite and drained his beer when the thrum of the shower in the master bathroom stopped.

He heard the soft tread of bare feet enter the kitchen and turned to tell Ray to eat, but froze as he realized what he’d forgotten—clean clothes. Ray stood there with nothing but a thin towel wrapped around his waist. There was nothing else blocking his body from Elliot’s hungry gaze. His tanned skin glistened, and his dark hair, finally free of gel and dried sweat, dripped in a tousled mess. Ray padded over to him with a devious smirk, swaying his hips with each step.

“Is that one for me?” He nodded at the sandwich and open bottle of beer.

“Yeah.” Elliot turned away quickly. “I’ll grab you some clothes.”

He practically ran to his bedroom, hoping Ray didn’t notice he had a hard-on.

He took a few deep breaths and forced himself to calm down as he dug out a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, but he just ended up picturing Ray’s bare chest, then pictured him wearing the plain black boxers. Elliot sighed and shook his head. If he was so hard up that his own boxers were turning him on, he really needed to get laid. He set the clothes on the end of the bed, tried not to let his fucked-up imagination make him think about what Ray would look like waking up in his bed, and hurried back out to find the most erotic domestic scene he’d ever seen in his kitchen.

Ray was bent over and leaning into the fridge. The short towel was doing its best to keep his bare ass covered, but it was loose and drooping over his hips, revealing nearly an inch of Ray’s crack and the abrupt curve of his ass. Elliot licked his lips. He wanted to rip that towel away so bad his fingers twitched. Elliot caught himself as his legs, drawn by his cock, unconsciously moved him toward Ray. He swallowed hard and turned toward the counter. He was not going to fuck Ray Delgado. Not while the man was leaning into his fridge, anyway.

Ray emerged a moment later with his arms wrapped around turkey, cheese, mayo, and a tomato. He was trying to hold the loosening towel up with his elbow.

The sandwich Elliot had left on the plate for him was already gone.

“I’m so hungry even those nasty Pop-Tarts sound good,” said Ray, dumping everything on the counter. “Workouts like that are why you’re so skinny.”

“So?” Elliot stared down at the edge of Ray’s towel. It had slipped over his hipbone. One quick tug, and Ray would be completely naked. “There’s a T-shirt and shorts for you on the bed. I’ll make you another sandwich. Go get dressed.”

“You should have another one yourself. Do you realize how many calories you’ve got to burn, doing that judo shit?”

“About six hundred calories an hour.”

Ray cocked a single eyebrow at him. “My guess was higher. Still, that means you burned twenty-four hundred extra calories tonight, just in your workout. You’re tall, so you probably need at least two thousand more calories a day just to live, and so far, I think you’ve eaten fifteen hundred. You can’t train like a fighter and eat like a supermodel. It doesn’t work.”

“Well, I normally manage dinner before two in the morning. I eat.”

“Another sandwich wouldn’t hurt.” Ray hiked up his towel and reached for the bread.

“Go get dressed.” Elliot elbowed him out of the kitchen, then started putting together two more sandwiches, using up the rest of the turkey.

He also tried to clear his head. If he had to take another cold shower to be able to sleep, it really would be sunrise before he got to bed.

“I was thinking I’d go to a hotel after I got some sleep!” Ray’s voice came from the bedroom. He came out a moment later, wearing the boxers Elliot had left for him but no T-shirt.

“You don’t need to go to a hotel. Didn’t I put out a shirt for you?”

“I don’t like to wear them to sleep.” Ray stared at him for a long moment. “I prefer not to wear anything.” He glanced pointedly down at Elliot’s bare chest. “Fair’s fair, though. Anyway, I was thinking that losing those laptops was too much of a coincidence. Someone thinks Sophie stole that money, and they must think the way to get it back is somewhere on her laptop. The only time I’ve been anywhere near it was this morning, which means someone had to be following us. I wasn’t seeing things.”

“Again, my car, my house. I’ve only been assigned here a few weeks.”

“If Alejandro has been following me since Friday, he could have been watching us this morning. It’d be a safe bet that he followed us here, too.”

“If he was following us, wouldn’t he know that you didn’t go back to your place with the laptop?”

“I don’t know.” Ray shrugged. “But going to a hotel would be safer than staying here with you, for both of us. Your alarm system’s not even hooked up, and I don’t want you getting hurt because of this mess.”

“It’s not monitored, and I don’t turn it on, but the alarm system works just fine.”

“Even if it works, the only thing it can do is make noise. Noise isn’t going to scare someone like Alejandro. It’s not going to stop him, either.”

“I’m not arguing that. But it would give us an extra thirty seconds to get oriented and line up a shot.” Elliot began slicing tomato to add to their sandwiches. “I’d rather not shoot holes in my woodwork. And a hotel would have the disadvantage of having a single point of entry. Easy to get trapped.”