Final orders, p.17
Final Orders, page 17
part #5 of Hazard and Somerset: Arrows in the Hand Series
Hazard almost lost the fight with the laugh this time. When he’d mastered himself again—maybe not quickly enough, to judge by the suspicious cast of Colt’s gaze—he said, “I’ll talk to the Boones in a few days, after they’ve had a chance to calm down.”
“Oh my God, Pops, no.”
A little heat came into Hazard’s face, and he said, “Maybe John.”
“Yes, please, God.”
“I notice you weren’t so eager to have John be your spokesperson when someone had to argue with your chemistry teacher.”
Colt rolled his eyes. “It was two points.”
“Really? Because when you came home, you tried to tear up that test and said, ‘It’s the difference between an A and a B, and it doesn’t even matter because I’ll never get into S&T now.’”
Ducking his chin, Colt shifted his weight. Then he looked up, a tiny smirk playing over his face. “I heard you telling Aileen about it.”
“Jesus Christ.”
His gaze cut toward a house down the street. “And Mr. Tomlinson when you went over to tell him to put pants on.”
“Fine. Next time, John can explain Beer’s law to your mail-away-degree instructor.”
The smirk softened into a genuine smile that was still, in its profundity, unbearably sad.
“Colt,” Hazard said quietly, not trusting either of them if the words were any louder, “I have tried not to intrude in your life, especially in sensitive matters.”
“You told me and J-H we weren’t eating enough fiber. You said you had a bar graph.”
Hazard ignored the diversion. “But I’m worried, and so I’m going to ask: what’s going on? You’re such a good person. Why are you doing these things? The fight at school, now this. What’s going on?”
Colt shrugged and stared at the ground. He scuffed Somers’s sneaker against the concrete. When one moment and then another had limped past, he mumbled, “I don’t know.”
Weighing his options, Hazard considered the boy. Then he let out a soft breath. “I understand that it’s difficult to have someone you care about start spending time with someone else—”
“It’s not that,” Colt said sharply, his head coming up.
“Ok, but if it was, it would be perfectly natural. You and Ashley are very close, and now he’s dating—”
“They’re not dating. They’re hanging out. And I told you, it’s not that, so can you just drop it?”
“Last month, we talked about the possibility that your feelings for Ashley might be more complicated than friendship. I’ve left the topic alone since then because I didn’t want to pressure you, but—”
“Are you even listening to me?” Colt was hugging himself. “Do you know how fucking annoying this is? I told you it’s not—it’s not what you’re talking about. And you’re not even listening to me. J-H and I hate how you never listen to us, ok? It’s really fucking irritating.”
Somewhere nearby, a sprinkler started up, the chirp-chirp-chirp of rusty metal straining to turn as water hissed steadily.
“Sorry,” Colt mumbled, looking away first. He took the empty packaging from Hazard. “I’ll throw this away. Thanks, you know, for helping me with the wipers.”
He cut through the garage, heading for the backyard, and a moment later, Hazard heard the door to the house open and shut. The sprinkler was still going strong. It was a nice night, Hazard thought, wiping his hands on his thighs. Too nice to be cooped up.
He returned the pliers to the pegboard. He found their sprinkler—not the rotating one, but the oscillating model. He dug out the hose. He got it set up out in the middle of the yard, and then he sat on the steps of the front porch and watched the water rise and fall. Noah came home with a minivan full of kids, and Hazard responded to shouts and hellos with waves as Noah herded them inside. Sunset came on like a forest fire, turning the windows on the other side of the street into flickers of flame.
When the Mustang came up the street, growly and grumbly, the same light pinwheeled on the windshield, and Hazard had to shield his eyes. He heard the car pull into the driveway, and then the sound changed when it entered the garage, and then the engine cut off. Hazard blinked away the dazzle as footsteps rang out on the concrete. Then his husband emerged, still in uniform, one eyebrow arched. He stopped. The other eyebrow went up. Then he shrugged out of his coat and came up the walk. When he sat on the steps, he was close enough that they touched: knees, hips, shoulders. He smelled like his cologne—sea salt and amber—and the day’s sweat and like John-Henry Somerset. He loosened his tie with two fingers. He had nice hands: strong, masculine, but not too large. That was something new, something Hazard had discovered as an adult; he didn’t remember what Somers’s hands had looked like as a boy.
“Hi, honey. How was your day?”
Hazard quirked his lips at the line.
“Did I miss World War III?”
“Not exactly.”
“Ok, that’s promising. But you talked to Colt?”
Hazard nodded. He was looking out at the tar patches in the middle of the street. Did having the chief of police as your husband mean you got extra consideration when your roads were shit? It had definitely made a difference, Hazard had noticed, when it came to the snowplows.
“What happened?”
“Oh, it went surprisingly well.”
Silence. And then, “Is this sarcasm?”
“No. It was going great, John, right up until he told me how I don’t listen to him and I’m apparently the most annoying person in the universe.”
The silence lasted longer this time. Somers sounded strangely relieved when he asked, “Is that all?”
“I think it’s enough, don’t you?”
Somers laughed. “I know we’re both new at the teenage thing, but I’m pretty sure that being annoying and getting accused of not listening is the gold standard of adolescent parenting.”
“Oh, great. Then never mind, John. I feel fucking fantastic.”
The laughter lasted longer this time, and Somers slid an arm around Hazard’s waist. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sure it hurt your feelings.”
“It did not hurt my feelings, John. I don’t need to write about it in my Hello Kitty diary.”
“If you had a Hello Kitty diary, I would make you tell Colt about it so we could watch his head explode.”
That drew a bigger smile from Hazard. He squashed it when he realized what was happening. “I’m angry.”
“Ok.”
“I tried really hard, and I did my absolute best not to repeat bad behaviors. All the shit I’ve been trying to get a handle on, I tried my fucking hardest, and it was working right until—”
“It wasn’t?”
“I was going to say shit exploded.”
Grinning, Somers said, “Cut yourself some slack. He’s ninety percent hormones and nine percent potato chips and point-nine percent human being right now. If the conversation didn’t start at thermonuclear war and escalate from there, I think it’s a win. You should be proud of yourself.”
“Your math doesn’t add up. That’s only ninety-nine-point-nine percent.”
“You wouldn’t be doing your job if all you did was validate him and tell him everything was ok and that he’d never done anything wrong.” Somers stood and held out a hand. “And I left that point-one percent because I figure there’s probably something else swimming around in the mix, and you know, as a man of science, I like to leave some wiggle room.”
“No scientist has ever, quote, ‘liked to leave some wiggle room.’” But Hazard let himself be helped up. And then he let himself be kissed. And then he pushed his husband away, scowling into Somers’s laugh, and said, “And he’s not that happy with you either, John, so don’t think you can waltz in there and act like everything’s normal.”
Grinning, Somers said, “That sounds like a challenge.”
And fuck of all fucks, the blond shit did exactly that: he swanned into the house like nothing had happened, chatting at Colt—who was now scowling at the TV, apparently trying to murder the host of Ghost Nation by glaring at him through the screen—and slipping back into their normal routine. Hazard went to work in the kitchen, prepping an easy, go-to meal of cacio and pepe with a fresh salad on the side. As he chopped vegetables, he listened as Somers worked his magic, untying all the knots Colt had tied himself up in, until by the time dinner was ready, the two of them were blasting each other—or maybe blasting aliens, or God only knew what—on the Xbox.
They were still talking about it at dinner, reciting highlights for each other, laughing about something—Hazard had no idea what, but the word frag kept coming up—that Somers had done, and breaking down moments in the battles where they could do better next time. Fairly quickly, it got to be annoying as fuck, and Hazard decided he had better ask a question or his husband and his son would run off with the Xbox together and he’d never see them again.
“What were you blasting?” Hazard asked as he pushed the salad toward Colt, who rolled his eyes and added it to his plate.
The secondhand embarrassment in Somers’s face evaporated into an easy smile, and he opened his mouth, but Colt groaned and shook his head.
“How are you two the same age?”
“Be nice,” Somers murmured.
“No, you, like, actually understand things, and he’s like this million-year-old dinosaur.”
“Bubs.”
Colt rolled his eyes, but he did launch into an explanation that was so confusing that Hazard immediately realized he had no chance of understanding and, subsequently, his best move was to nod.
When Colt had finished, Hazard said, “Thank you for explaining that.”
“He didn’t understand any of it,” Colt informed Somers.
Face hot, Hazard stood and collected plates. “As a point of interest, I think I should point out that the most chronologically recent dinosaurs lived at least two hundred and forty million years ago.”
Colt turned to face Somers.
“I know, bubs.” Somers was gathering dishes too. “Phone, please. And you know who’s doing these dishes, right?”
Colt grumbled and made some scary faces. For safety reasons, he was allowed to have his phone when Hazard and Somers weren’t home, and he’d obviously been hoping they’d forgotten about the mailbox incident and the inconvenient fact that his ass had been grounded. After a moment, though, he surrendered his phone and went over to start the water in the sink.
Once Colt had started the dishes, Somers headed for the stairs. Hazard lingered, drying plates and bowls. If he waited, he told himself, the thought incomplete. But the second time Colt turned and bumped into him, the boy growled and said, “Get out of my kitchen.” While it seemed like an opening for a larger conversation about property rights, spatial navigation, and the umbrella concept of this-is-my-house-thank-you-very-fucking-much, Hazard decided tonight might not be the night. He had read something along those lines on the millions of mommy blogs he’d scanned that day.
He found Somers in the office upstairs. The blond man sat at the desk, still in uniform, watching what looked like security camera footage on his laptop. His coat hung from the back of the chair, and his sleeves were cuffed above the elbow, exposing the swell of biceps and the whorls of his tattoos against smooth, golden skin.
“Yes?” he murmured without looking away from the screen.
“Do that thing where you loosen your tie with two fingers again.”
He laughed, and his posture relaxed: the athletic slouch, the arrow of his legs drawing Hazard’s eye. It was almost enough to make Hazard forget the bandage on his husband’s head.
“What are you looking at?” Hazard moved to stand behind his husband and rested a hand on his shoulder, his thumb stroking the side of his neck. “Is that the Ace in the Hole?”
Somers nodded.
“From what? An ATM across the street?”
“A gas station.”
“And I assume you have footage from security cameras near the Sturgises’ home?”
His husband made a sound of affirmation as he sped up the playback rate. Cars zipped back and forth along the street, but no one emerged from the Ace in the Hole. When the timestamp passed two AM, Somers let out a breath and closed the video.
“I was trying to dig up something on the Pawloskis this afternoon,” Hazard said as Somers opened another video. This one showed an intersection that, if Hazard remembered correctly, was one cross-street up from the Ace. “I got shit, but I’ll try again tomorrow.”
Somers shook his head.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” Hazard asked.
“Do you really think that’s our best course right now?”
“Evan? I think he’s a person of interest.”
It wasn’t anything in particular—not a sound, not a sigh. Maybe, if Hazard had to put a name on it, something in the muscle tissue, a tightness written there that expressed Somers’s disagreement as clearly as words.
“What am I missing? Do I need to remind you everything we learned about that kid today?”
“What’d we learn about him, Ree?” Somers tapped the touchpad hard enough to rattle the desk. “We learned he might be bi or gay. We learned someone is terrorizing and humiliating him because of that. I guess that puts him right at the top of our list, doesn’t it?”
“Blackmail and fear of exposure shouldn’t be disregarded,” Hazard said slowly, groping through the dark of the conversation. “And I saw him retrieve a knife from his parents’ car the night of Loretta’s talk.” He tried to stop there. “Terrorizing? Really, John? If he’s gay, he’s gay.”
It was the wrong thing; he knew it as soon as he said it, felt the pitfall opening underfoot.
Somers sat forward until Hazard’s hand slid from his shoulder. He forced the laptop’s screen back, presumably so he could see it better from this new and clearly uncomfortable angle. “No, right, how could I forget? You told your parents five seconds after you knew you were gay. You’ve only told me a hundred times.”
“John—”
“I think Joyce Sturgis is still a person of interest. Is that ok with you? Am I allowed to exercise my professional judgment as chief of police?”
“What is going on here? I never said anything about not looking at Joyce; obviously I’m still interested in her. All I’m saying is that there’s something weird about Evan.”
“There’s nothing weird about Evan. There’s nothing weird about a kid wanting some privacy. What’s weird is that bitch trying to scapegoat him by outing him. Sorry, I guess I don’t think we should go after him just because Joyce told us we should.”
“Go after him? It’s a murder investigation, and it’s not unreasonable—”
“Can you drop it? Please?” Somers’s shoulders drew up, and he leaned even further over the laptop. “I don’t even know why we’re talking about this when Joyce Sturgis doesn’t have a fucking alibi!”
Something about that statement didn’t track, but rage abraded Hazard’s control, and he heard himself saying, “Why are you yelling at me?”
“I’m not yelling!”
The shout rang in the small room. Somers’s shoulder blades contracted. Then, tapping the touchpad again, he paused the video. When he turned around, he wore a goofy, shamefaced grin. It was so honest, so earnestly embarrassed, that Hazard felt the humor of the moment too—the gap between the words and the delivery and, of course, the whole unreality of this conversation. Then Somers laughed, the sound awkward and small, and a chuckle slipped free from Hazard.
“Can I apologize?” Somers asked, his smile shrinking. “I’m stressed, and it’s been a long couple of days.”
“No, I’m sorry. I dug in my heels about this because I’m still upset about how my conversation with Colt ended.”
The caesura that followed was too sharp for a normal silence, the ragged threads of their conversation snipped and left to hang. Somers spun in the chair. His knees were wide again. His thighs, under the navy blue of his uniform, shot another dark arrow toward where the fabric drew tight against the outline of his dick. He ran a hand through his hair, his face softening, the corner of his mouth wanting to start a fire.
“Colt’s busy with the dishes,” he said, his voice throaty, almost a whisper. “And I’ve got an idea for how we can both deal with some of this stress.”
Hazard opened his mouth to say something about reconciling the week’s receipts—a strawman gambit, mostly designed to make his husband work a little more for it—but Somers was already out of the chair, pressing a kiss to his mouth. His hand found Hazard’s and drew it to him, and Hazard’s fingers traced the outline of his erection. Hazard made an animal noise in his throat.
“Uh huh,” Somers said with a smoky chuckle. “Me too.”
Hooking Hazard’s fingers, he started toward their room.
They were stripping out of their clothes while Somers was still closing the door, Hazard shucking his shirt first, then fumbling with the laces on his boots. His breath caught when Somers kissed him on the spine, and then, when Somers bit his shoulder, he made a noise that was so full of need that his face heated.
Somers laughed again, the sound dark fire, and bit him again, harder.
“Jesus—” Hazard’s hands were shaking, the buckle on his belt jingling. “John, what the hell?”
“You feel it too, right?”
He spun Hazard and pushed him back so that Hazard fell onto the bed. Somers finished undoing Hazard’s jeans and tugged them down. The black trunks followed next. Hazard’s cock fell hot and heavy against his belly. He could smell himself, the day, his own arousal.
“It’s not just me,” Somers was saying as he stripped out of his uniform. “You feel it too.” Then his head came up, his voice whetted with something Hazard couldn’t name. “Ree?”
Propped with his arms behind his head, Hazard nodded. He felt drunk. He thought if he touched himself right then, hell, if he did anything more than breathe, he’d get off like this.
