Misdirection, p.1
Misdirection, page 1
part #2 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
MISDIRECTION
BOREALIS: WITHOUT A COMPASS
BOOK 2
GREGORY ASHE
H&B
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Misdirection
Copyright © 2021 Gregory Ashe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests and all other inquiries, contact: contact@hodgkinandblount.com
Published by Hodgkin & Blount
https://www.hodgkinandblount.com/
contact@hodgkinandblount.com
Published 2021
Printed in the United States of America
This cover has been designed using resources from Freepik.com.
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63621-017-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-63621-016-2
Misdirection, noun: the act of directing wrongly; the state of being led in the wrong direction; in theatrical magic, a form of deception in which the performer draws the audience’s attention to one thing to distract it from another.
Shaw’s note: For example, if you are at the State Fair for the first time in your life, and your friend has a substance abuse disorder, and he falls down a manhole while following the smell of fried cheese.
North’s note: (the real story) I tripped. I am not a cartoon character. Misdirection is more like the time Shaw disappeared for two days to research lady boys.
Shaw’s correction: That was my private time. I was doing research. For a term paper.
North’s correction: Yeah? Well, you shot your research all the way up the wall, and I had to clean it up because I sure as fuck was not going to lose my security deposit.
Shaw’s reaction: I hate you.
North’s reaction: I’m the one who had to borrow a ladder.
Chapter 1
KINGSLEY SHAW WILDER ALDRICH was trying to finish his story, but he had to compete with the bass line of a Weezer song.
“—and that’s when I knew I could do it because the power to achieve my dreams had been inside me all along.”
North McKinney, his boyfriend, sighed, spun his beer, and said, “The power to buy pre-shelled pistachios had been inside you all along?”
“Don’t say it like that. It was a very enabling revelation. Societal pressures have been holding me back for years. Understanding that the power had been—”
“Please don’t keep saying ‘inside me.’”
“—inside me all along was life-changing. I’m going to write a book. I’m going to free people from their chains.” Shaw leaned back and stole a cheesy fry from North’s plate. “And you didn’t have any complaints about me using the phrase ‘inside me’ last night.”
A pair of young gym-bunny gays was passing the table right then, and they shared a look and burst out laughing.
North’s cheeks reddened, but his only answer was to drag his plate closer and curl an arm around it protectively, glaring at Shaw.
“Also, that cheese is mostly preservatives,” Shaw said, “and it’s hardening inside your small intestine, and you’ll probably get a blockage and die.”
North’s eyes narrowed.
“A slightly smaller portion—”
“No.”
“Or if you shared—”
“There it is. No. No. No. No fucking way, Shaw. Nibble on your lettuce.”
“If you’d be nice to me, maybe I’d nibble on your lettuce.”
North covered his face with one hand, but he didn’t relax the protective curl of his arm around the cheesy fries.
The Unicorn Trough wasn’t officially a gay bar, but with a name like that, it had a hard time being anything else. At least half the couples were men; of the remaining half, some were women, some were straights, and a few were clearly enby. A banner over the bar limply announced 90’S NIGHT, but that only seemed to refer to the choice of music—nobody else had gotten into the spirit of it. Colored lights spun and swiveled, illuminating patches of the haze that floated over the dance floor; a handful of couples were dancing, all of them young and clearly looking for an excuse to grind on each other.
“My parents would have killed me if they’d found out I came to a place like this,” North said as he dragged a fry through the cheese sauce and glanced around. “Not that that ever stopped me.”
“My parents would have cried with joy if I’d asked to go to The Unicorn Trough,” Shaw said. “They made me do the whole gay-straight alliance thing in school after I came out. They were literally waiting for me to tell them; my mom had made t-shirts ahead of time.”
“They made you join the GSA? That seems like a bit much.”
Shaw shook his head. “They made me start it.”
North rolled his eyes. “Parents have some fucked up ideas about knowing what’s best. Exhibit A.”
He didn’t have to glance across the room for Shaw to know what he meant; Exhibit A was Nicci Lesperance, the woman they were following that night. Nicci had a chop of purple-gray hair and was probably too full figured to be wearing nothing but a leather vest (on the back, the name of her yet-to-be-discovered band, Bathtub Punchout) and leather leggings. She was a middle manager at Aldrich Acquisitions, which was the company owned by Shaw’s father and which supplied most of the work for North and Shaw’s private investigation agency.
Nicci’s father, Ralph Lesperance, was an executive at the same company, and he had asked that North and Shaw look into a younger woman with whom Nicci was having an affair. Kelly Cann—fifteen years younger, with blond ringlets and cherry-red lipstick—was, from all North and Shaw had been able to discover, about what you’d expect from the lead-singer-slash-genius behind a band called Bathtub Punchout: no steady job, no education, heavy use of recreational drugs. The subtext when Ralph had given them the job had been to get rid of Kelly, and Shaw couldn’t exactly blame the man—but that didn’t make him blind to North’s point either.
Fanning aside the sweat, artificial smoke, and skunky weed that cobwebbed the air, Shaw grimaced and said, “I’m going to have asthma from breathing all this glycol or glycerin or whatever it is. I’m going to need lemongrass and sage and—”
North took a long pull from his Schlafly—their pale ale, tonight. It was his turn to watch the women, and he was frowning.
“—ginger root and gingko biloba and—”
North lifted a finger from the Schlafly’s brown glass, and Shaw went silent. Then, with a tiny shake of his head, North said, “Never mind. They’re just getting more comfortable in the booth.” He took another, quicker pull on the beer. “And you’re not getting asthma.”
“I might be getting asthma. I definitely feel like I’m getting asthma. My throat’s all scratchy—”
“Because you’ve eaten four bowls of bar mix, and it’s mostly pretzels.”
“—and my tongue feels like corroded battery terminals—”
“Because you’ve had six Cokes.”
“Four, North! I had four. You cut me off, remember?”
“I remember very fucking well, thank you. I also remember that you flirted with the piece of meat behind the bar and got two more while you thought I was in the bathroom.”
“You can’t—I didn’t—” Shaw struggled to sit up straight. “First of all, trust is super important in a healthy relationship, and—”
North made a face as he retrieved his phone.
“Thank you, Vishnu,” Shaw whispered.
When North saw the caller, his expression disassembled into a deadly blankness that Shaw had come to recognize over the last few months. He stared at the phone, unmoving. In Shaw’s ears, the music became a background of pounding white noise—surf washing everything away.
Fighting the urge to close his eyes, Shaw said, “You can take it.”
“No.” But North kept looking at the phone. “No, he knows we’re only supposed to communicate through our lawyers now.”
“So don’t take the call.”
North sat there, staring at the illuminated screen that flashed with Tucker’s name. “He’s drunk. And he wants to scream at me. Or he wants me to think he’s drunk, and he wants to scream at me. Or he doesn’t think he’s as drunk as he really is, but he wants me to think he—”
“I’m going to get some water,” Shaw said, sliding down from the stool.
Behind him, North’s voice was low and hard as he said, “What the fuck do you want, Tucker? What the fuck don’t you understand about ‘no contact’? Are you too fucking stupid to understand—” North broke off and resumed more fiercely, “I’ll talk to you however I fucking want, you fucking imbecile. We’re not—”
And then The Smashing Pumpkins were singing about tonight. Shaw kept his gaze on the bar, refusing to look back. He wormed his way through the press of bodies, flagged down the bartender, and ran a hand through his auburn hair—long enough now that he could hold it back with a scrunchie, which was a nice change from the crazy cloud of curls that North had described as Bob Ross-bred-with-a-poodle (the little yippy kind, he had clarified).
“Hey, beautiful,” the bartender said, leani
“Thanks,” Shaw said, checking over his shoulder; North was bending over their two-top, one hand cupped around the phone, probably so he could eviscerate Tucker more thoroughly. “You’re beautiful too. I bet you’re a Pisces.”
“Can I get some service?” a salt-and-pepper bro at the end of the bar shouted.
“What’s Pisces?” the bartender said, smiling as he pulled the towel from his shoulder and flapped it at the bro. “What dates, I mean?”
“February 19th to March 20th.”
“No way. March 1st.”
“I knew it. It’s because you’re so pretty. And I bet you have a really beautiful soul. Have you ever had your chakras read?”
The bartender blinked. Then his smile got bigger. “No, but I’ll try anything once. Do you want to—”
“Hey, buddy.” Daddy-bro was shouting again. “Trawl dick on your own time.”
The bartender shot him an angry look and turned back to Shaw. “I’ve got to, you know. Can I get you anything? Another Coke?”
For a moment, something nasty snapped its teeth inside Shaw, and he almost said yes. “Just a water. And another Schlafly, the pale ale.”
When the bartender set the drinks next to Shaw, he took Shaw’s wrist in one hand. His touch was warm and soft. His thumb traced the vein visible under Shaw’s pale skin. “I’d really like to keep talking to you.”
“I’d really like to keep talking to you,” Shaw said with a smile. “And you know what? I’m really glad you said that I’m making your night better because now you’re making my night better. North, that’s my boyfriend, is being such a jerk. It’s not like he tries to be a jerk. Well, sometimes he does. Like one time, he came home when I was using one of those as-seen-on-TV back shavers, and he told me if I really wanted to manscape, I could start, well, down there, because, quote, ‘it’s like getting lost in the pubic Amazon,’ which was really rude, and I said—”
The bartender released Shaw’s wrist and straightened. “You’ve got a boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah, he’s the one over there who’s trying really hard to look butch with the henley and—”
The bartender shot toward the other end of the bar, saying something like wasting my fucking time under his breath.
“I didn’t give you the name of my psychic,” Shaw called after the young man. “If you want your chakras read. It’s Master Hermes!”
“Dude,” one of the guys next to Shaw said, covering his ear.
At a more normal volume, Shaw repeated, “It’s Master Hermes.”
“Yeah, whatever, quit yelling in my fucking ear.”
Shaw was carrying the drinks back to the table when Nicci got up and headed toward the bathroom. Kelly played with her glass, gaze fixed on the appletini in front of her, until Nicci had disappeared down a narrow hall. Then she grabbed Nicci’s purse, slid out of the booth, and shot toward the door.
North was still whispering furiously into the phone.
“Something’s happening,” Shaw said, touching North’s elbow.
With an inarticulate cry, North ripped the phone from his ear and hammered it against the table. When he pulled it back, he said, “No, you listen to me, you abusive piece of shit—”
“She’s running,” Shaw said.
“You want to talk about unfair? You want to talk about what’s unfair, Tucker? What’s unfair is every fucking minute I had to spend standing behind you, smiling and looking supportive—”
Shaw grimaced, set the drinks on the table, and went after Kelly. She was moving at a fast walk, sliding through the crowd without glancing back. Shaw copied her. She hit the door and disappeared into the night, fingers of artificial smoke curling after her. Shaw was five yards behind her. The April evening was cool, the air shockingly clean and sweet with spring after the weed-and-glycol haze in the Trough. A couple of guys were making out hard, pressed up against the brick façade. A woman in a matted fur coat smoked at the curb, the security light washing out her face so she looked like a picture from an old book.
Kelly was already halfway down the block, disappearing between the aprons of light from the streetlamps, and Shaw took off after her. She was wearing biker boots to go with the leather leggings and the leather vest, and they made her steps solid, heavy, the only sound in the universe. At the next alley, she jinked right, swallowed up by the yellow, fluttering light from deep between the brick buildings.
When Shaw came around the corner, she punched him, aiming for the face. He had good reactions, honed by sparring in the smattering of martial arts he’d picked up and then abandoned, and he managed to dodge so that the punch only clipped his ear. It still stung, and the rush of adrenaline narrowed his vision to a tunnel and sent his pulse racing. She kicked before he could recover, catching him in the hip, and Shaw went down. He landed on the cracked pavement, chips of cement slicing his palms.
Kelly came after him. A part of Shaw’s brain told him things had gone wrong—she should have run again; now was the perfect opportunity for her to escape—but things were moving too quickly for him to figure out why. Her boot came down in a vicious stomp intended for Shaw’s head. He rolled and came up against a dumpster.
The movement had reversed their positions: now Kelly stood at the mouth of the alley, and Shaw scrabbled backward, deeper into the cleft between the brick walls. Bringing back Nicci’s purse as though intending to use it as a club, Kelly leapt forward. Shaw grabbed a broken section of pallet, driving splinters into his hands, and tossed it. It caught Kelly at the legs. She swore, stumbled, and almost lost her balance.
That delay gave Shaw time to regain his feet. When Kelly lunged again, Shaw was ready. He threw a jab that was meant to catch her in the solar plexus, but the uneven cement caused Kelly to lose her balance. Shaw’s fist connected with her breast. Kelly’s eyes got huge, and she screamed.
Shaw had already committed himself to the uppercut, launching up with as much force as his body could produce, focusing all of it behind his clenched hand. The blow caught her on the jaw, a perfect bell ringer. Silence. Lights out. Then the soft scuff of clothing as she slid to the ground.
Behind Shaw, in the alley, a man’s voice said, “Jesus Christ, sorry I’m late. Toss me the wallet so you can get back in there before the bitch realizes—”
Shaw spun. Through red clouds of adrenaline, he was aware of his hand throbbing, his heart hammering in his throat. He locked eyes with a man who had at least six inches on Shaw and a hundred pounds. Bald, tiny eyes, and the evolutionary trade-off of a neck for shoulders that looked big enough to do some serious smashing.
His steps slowed. His tiny eyes were little black chips of confusion. “Kels, what…what did you do to her? I’m going to—”
“Hey.” That was North, speaking out of the darkness near the bar’s fire door and stepping into the middle of the alley. “Bozo.”
Tiny-eyes lumbered around.
North grabbed a wooden slat and cracked it across the back of the big guy’s head before he’d gotten farther than a quarter-turn. Again came the soft thump of flesh hitting cement. North tossed the broken length of wood aside, standing up straight, shoulders back, deep breaths making his chest rise and fall. The orange glow from the security light touched the mess of short blond hair, the pale eyes the color of ice. He was trying not to smile. He put his hands on his hips and glanced down at the big guy.
“Very het,” Shaw called, shaking out his hand. Adrenaline was leaching out of him, and pain from his hand and a dozen scrapes and bruises was rushing in.
The half-hidden smile on North’s face went out, and he scowled.
“No, seriously. It was super het. I’m really proud of you. I thought you’d still be busy on the phone, and then boom, ‘Hey, bozo!’”
