He fidgeted with Peach’s menthol croak in his ear:
Kiddo, you’re always exactly where you’re supposed to be.
Once they passed the eighteenth floor, Ruben started to say something, but Andy shook his head. Looking at the muttering gray heads still with them.
And then they were at the top. The door slid open on the little foyer, and Hope stood there with her arms crossed under her breasts, a blue cold pack in one hand. “I fucked up. I fucked up, Mr. B.”
“You stop that now.” Andy spoke gently, no longer slurring. How had he sobered up so fast?
“Are you hurt?” Ruben scanned her quickly.
She looked seriously rattled. “Asshole smacked me. Knocked my noggin really, but my damn sister hits harder than that. I was more surprised than anything.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of one hand. “I heard that stupid fire alarm, but I always ignore it. Thirty-plus flights? Fuck you. I’m too claustro and who the
hell
clogs a staircase during an emergency? Dicks.” Grim laughter.
Ruben spoke calmly. “Hey, it doesn’t matter. The cops will be here to take your statement.”
Hope and Andy looked at each other for a beat. She took a shuddery breath. “So the alarm’s bleeping and I was in the office finishing up the spreadsheet for Brussels, and I heard something crash in your bedroom, y’know? I thought you’d ditched the museum early, so I climb the stairs to check. Big guy came out of your room and popped me cold.” She pressed the ice pack to her left eye. Her skin was so dark Ruben couldn’t see the bruise yet.
“Jerk! I didn’t even think. I swung back and he goes over the rail—
bam
—Hit the floor like a sack of onions. Bastard. I didn’t even go down, just called the police from my cell. Alarm was going off already so I couldn’t hit the panic—” She started to shake.
“You oughtta go to the hospital anyways.” Ruben looked at her for permission and cautiously checked her cheekbone and temple.
“I don’t break easy.” She sniffed. “I ran to the other side of the apartment in case he popped up. Then when I looked down the hall he’d split. He musta split.”
Andy thrust his hands in his pockets, looking guilty as hell. “So sorry, Hope. This is my fault.”
After weeks of thinking the threat to Andy was imaginary and taking the paycheck anyway, Ruben felt like an asshole.
A knock on the wall, and Hope flinched.
Two cops walked into the apartment and badged. “Hope Stanford?”
Ruben waited for the assumptions, but to their credit, they didn’t leap to any conclusions about the weepy black girl and the scary Hispanic guy wearing a shoulder holster. For once, his bull’s-eye face didn’t drop him in shit with the police. Must’ve been the tuxes. Money makes everyone so polite.
Andy led them to the dining room to sit down and left Ruben to his thoughts. How had the intruder escaped? Hope had had time to make half a call before he’d vanished.
Ruben doubled back to the elevator to check the waste closet that maintenance cleared twice a day. A low door at the back opened into the back stairs and service elevator the porters used. No signs of entry, and the bags blocked it besides.
Think.
In the dining room, Andy was asking the cops something in a guilty undertone. He sounded shakier than Hope, actually.
Ruben doubled back toward the living room. Next to the powder room, a narrow door opened onto the B stairs. Again, probably designed for exit during a fire.
The alarm was a decoy. The intruder had cleared the building so he could make his way upstairs with no one watching the monitors.
Except this exit hadn’t been jimmied or cracked either. Ruben looked around at the apartment’s layout.
Behind him the cops asked the boilerplate incident-interview questions.
Ruben walked to the cavernous living room with Manhattan stretched out in sequins to the south. Had some intruder actually scaled the building? Yesterday he’d have laughed at the paranoia.
Where was the rathole?
On a hunch he slid the terrace door open and moved out into the sultry air. The traffic below was muffled by distance. Following the guardrail, he skirted the whole apartment. No furniture or plants out of place. Inside Hope mimed the encounter again.
Ruben reached the outside of the guest room underneath Andy’s and around to the office without finding so much as a dead bug. Then he saw.
Jimmied door. Bloody streaks.
“Motherfucker.” He spun and jogged all the way back to the living room. He raised his voice. “He broke the lock on the service door by the Jacuzzi.” This place had too many bolt-holes.
The cops blinked at him.
How could he make them understand what was happening up here?
Andy stood up. “He’s back there?”
“No. Long gone. But the bolt’s cracked and there’s blood.”
Hope smiled at that. “Good. I knocked him hard.”
“Not a lot, but enough to test. I didn’t want to disturb anything.”
The younger officer stayed with Hope while she called her fiancé, and the elder let Ruben show him. When Ruben returned Andy was pacing in the living room.
“And you said I was paranoid.” Andy looked white. “Thank Christ you’re here, man.”
Yeah, about that.
“Some help I was.”
“You were. You are.”
By the bar, Hope cleared her throat. She had her purse over her shoulder. “Mr. Bauer, I’m gonna go to the hospital with the officers. Get checked out.”
Andy nodded. “Good. Great. You want me to call your fiancé, your sister? We could come with you?”
She shook her head. “John’s coming to meet me. Oso, you keep an eye on him. I need this job.”
When she’d gone, Ruben plucked at his lip. “You gotta hire a real outfit that can keep this place secure. I’m not sure—”
“I am.” Andy’s voice dropped and he stepped close enough to grip Ruben’s elbow, his eyes hard and cold. A muscle ticked in his angular jaw. “Look, they sent one guy. Far as anyone knows, you’re just some client. You’re my secret weapon.”
“Fine. Great. Bang bang. But you may wanna trade me in for a scarier model.”
Andy’s flannel eyes looked baffled. “Why?”
“Because I give a shit. Seriously. Andy? You’re not safe.”
“I been saying.”
“Well, I finally believe you.” Ruben nodded.
“Good. All the more reason you should be staying.” Andy squared his shoulders. He looked scary and scared, both. “And I’d like you to move in. I’ve got the room. Whatever room you want. You come up with a quote and I’ll pay.”
As if.
“Andy, I can’t. That’s not possible.”
“Why?”
Ruben closed his mouth. Making sense of his feelings was like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. How could he explain something he didn’t understand himself?
“Just a couple weeks. Till the deal is done.” Andy looked sweaty and pale. “Please, Ruben.”
Shit.
Voice, eyes, hand on his arm… all pinned him to the spot.
He couldn’t leave now, leave Andy in the lurch, at least not till Empire could sort out someone else to come in. Except he knew that Empire Security wasn’t up to this job. If he left, some overfed cop who didn’t give a shit would be swapped in, and Andy would get hurt for real.
If he really cared, if he wasn’t a coward, what choice did he have?
He’d have to move into the Iris temporarily. Just a few days, at least until he could convince Andy of hiring a bigger executive protection outfit for his own safety. After all, another week at the outside in a cushy apartment with a guy he’d started to consider a friend. Friend-
ly
, at least. His feelings shouldn’t be a factor.
How bad could it be? How much worse could it get?
Andy watched his face, waiting for the answer.
Oh man.
“Okay.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE BEST
way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
The next morning, with his entire life loaded into a duffel over one shoulder, Ruben stepped off the elevator into maniacal shouting.
“I want to die! I hope I die!” Andy was flushed and snarling in the hallway. “No.”
The fuck?
To his left, the paunchy Yugoslavian porter opened and closed his mouth a few times. He carried a toolkit and a red and gray box. “Mr. Bauer, all apartments must be outfitted with a carbon monox—”
“And we are. That’s great. If there’s any problem, you should take it up with the board. Oh wait, I’m
on
the board!”
Andy’s exaggerated anger almost seemed like a joke. The porter had no idea how to react. “You’ve already paid—”
“Thank you, no thank you.” As if the penthouse had spat him out, Andy ejected the poor guy without ceremony. “Let me suffocate and die in peace.”
The unused detector sat on the hall table.
Ruben moved out of the foyer, waiting for Andy to direct that rage at him.
Nope
.
Andy nodded at it. “Toss that.” Ruben picked up the brand-new box and shrugged. Perfectly good CO detector.
Waste.
More paranoid bullshit. “Hope let them in by mistake.”
“What the hell was that about?”
“Fucking bug. Fucking surveillance.”
“Well, may be. But are you sure, Andy?”
“Test it! You test that shit and see.” Andy’s waist buzzed and he pressed the earpiece into his skull, spinning away as if Ruben had vanished into the floor.
“Uh.” Ruben lowered his duffel. “I guess we’re done here.”
That evening when Ruben ran down to grid-check the car, he scooped up the box to toss it in the recycling, but when he’d gotten downstairs realized he still had the package in his hands.
“Crazy.” He’d take it home and install it at Charles’s apartment. His brother would be safer and Andy none the wiser. He carried the detector back to his room and stuffed it in his bag. He’d get rid of it next time he swung by 109th Street.
That second week, Andy took Ruben everywhere, as if they really were college buddies and business partners. The clothing helped Ruben blend, but no further threats materialized. He had to acknowledge that living up here on Park Avenue made New York way easier. He got to sleep in an actual bed, meals were free, and the commute was about twenty yards. They were roommates is all.
Except Ruben caught himself staring at Andy for reasons that had nothing to do with security. Being somewhere else made no difference. He told himself it was procedure, but the lists and sweeps became another way for him to get closer.
Andy had become a sexy puzzle with no solution.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Ruben got his first three-hundred-dollar haircut and finally got a chance to spy on Andy undetected.
“Haircut.” Soon as Ruben got off the elevator, Hope popped her head out of the office and pointed outside to the terrace. “He said you’re both looking scruffy.”
He ran a hand over his short hair and raised his eyebrows.
Hope shrugged but didn’t reply.
He sighed. “Time to polish the goon, I s’pose.”
“Drink?”
“I don’t.”
“Oh. Me neither.” Hope’s glance caught his as they walked to the living room. A silent question. “I’m a friend of Bill’s.”
Meaning she was in AA. An old code sober folks used to maintain anonymity out in the world. Anybody could be a drunk.
Ruben smiled and nodded, relieved to find an unexpected friend. “Me too. I’ve only known Bill about a year, but he saved my ass.”
“I met Bill when I was still dancing. Bad habit. Bad boyfriend, crazy debt. Little toot and a fresh bottle, I’d stay on my feet for a week. Then one night I fell off a stage and broke my arm.” Hope touched her nose and glanced toward the office. If Andy heard, he wouldn’t understand. “You?” Her voice dropped.
Sharing your drunkalogue was almost a handshake in the program. “Well, Miami. Odd jobs in bars, clubs breaking up fake fights. Free drinks. My wife worked the real job, y’know? Then one morning I woke up with a broken collar bone in the drunk tank, only she didn’t show to bail me out that time ’cause she’d left.
Left
-left.” It was a relief to tell someone up here. He looked at the office, but still no sign of their boss. “I sat there two days in pants I’d pissed and that was it.”
“I get that.” Nod. “The longer I’m sober, the drunker I was.” Shrug. “The program got me into business school. Apex. Life.”
“Good for you.”
“Likewise.” And for the first time since he’d come to work in the Iris, she touched him, placing her hand lightly on his shoulder like a benediction. She might not know his hell, but she’d crawled out of her own.
Peach always said,
Let go or be dragged.
He had admired Hope before, but now he understood her whirlwind intensity.
She left him out on the terrace. Andy was nowhere to be seen, and the sky was hazy with humidity. Ruben considered the extra four or five million it cost to have this kind of outdoor space on Park Avenue. After a minute, he hooked around past the guest room toward the library before he heard the hiss of a shower past the Jacuzzi.
He didn’t mean to spy, but somehow his body didn’t cooperate. He drifted toward the sound as if he’d gone deaf. He didn’t have any reason to spy on Andy, but a strange, hungry curiosity drove him.
Sure enough, Andy stepped out buck naked, toweling his scalp so roughly that his dick bounced. He had no tan lines and his flesh had a beige undertone, as if he’d tan rather than burn. His skin seemed one continuous biscuity length, broken only by the fuzz at his pits, pubes, and the spray between his tiny nipples. His calves were noticeably overdeveloped. The running, probably.
Andy hunched forward, scrubbing his hair and shoulders, dripping diamonds on the tile. His cock and balls seemed plump and vulnerable, although Ruben hadn’t seen many circumcised units in his life since boot camp. Then again, he hadn’t exactly hung around busy showers. Spying on Andy like this made him feel weird, somehow. As if he was doing his job and not, but at the same time.
Oxymoron.
Andy turned, scraping water from the blocky muscles. The haircut had tamed his cowlick.
Ruben swallowed. In the short time he’d been working here, he’d never felt free to stare at his boss unobserved, but Andy was doing something he shouldn’t want to see.
Huh.
It made him feel powerful but guilty. His skin prickled with stolen excitement.