A Breath of Life (Shadowy Solutions Book 4), page 17
“You’ve gone pale.”
“I’m… not feeling so hot.” It was the first truthful thing I’d said. My brain screamed, Find Clarence! Find Clarence. Find fucking Clarence!
“Have you taken anything?”
“Aspirin. This morning.”
“Nothing since?”
I shook my head and wiped my damp palms over my jeans. Echo bumped my knuckles with her wet nose, and I scratched her ear. “Lie down, girl,” I whispered. “I’m okay.”
Tallus peered under the table at the dog, questions on his face. If Echo was reacting, it meant one thing. My blood pressure was on the rise, and I most definitely was not okay.
“The lump on the back of your head.” Tallus indicated the spot on himself. “I still say you could have a concussion. Are you dizzy or nauseous?”
Yes, to both, but I lied so he wouldn’t worry. “Nah. Nothing like that. Just a headache. Some aches and pains. My face hurts, but I’ll live.” Before I internally combusted, I took control of the conversation, sputtering, “Tell me about acting.”
Tallus had been reaching for his glass of water and paused. He tipped his head to the side, a mild quirk appearing at the corner of his mouth. “Acting? That was… random. Why?”
“I…” Need a crash course, I didn’t say. “You acted in school, right? Plays and such. Performed. On stage. We’ve never talked about it. I’m curious.”
“You want to know about my acting days. Now. Here.” It was more of a statement than a question. “Okaaay.”
“I want to have a normal conversation, Tallus. I want to learn more about my boyfriend.” An idea occurred to me, and I added, “It’s one of your strengths. The ability to act can be beneficial in our line of work. It’s come in handy before.”
God help me. I wished I had an ounce of skill.
Tallus sat taller at the compliment, his scrutiny vanishing as the cocky, effervescent man I knew and loved returned. It was the right thing to say.
“Well, I’m not nearly as amazing as you think. In high school, I dreamed of making a career in acting. Not Hollywood. I wanted to rule the stage. Broadway style. I’d have moved to New York in a heartbeat. I mean, not now, but back then, definitely. Performing in front of an audience gives you a high unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Forget drugs. I craved the spotlight.”
“It suits you.”
His bashful smile hit me in the chest. “Always the flatterer.”
“So why didn’t you follow that dream?”
Tallus rotated his water glass and shrugged. “Too many ticks against me.”
“Your father?” His was as bad as mine. Words could be as powerful as fists, and they, too, left lasting marks.
Tallus rolled his eyes and huffed. “I didn’t give a shit how many times that sperm donor called me a faggot for loving the stage. It only made me want it more. Costumes. Glitter. I ate it up just to piss him off sometimes. You didn’t have to have much skill in high school. You could suck and still get cast in a lead role so long as you had stage presence. I had that in spades. However, I soon realized that I had no talent for singing or dancing. Both are huge assets when it comes to professional theater. Without those skills, your opportunities are basically cut in half.”
“You dance like a dream, Tallus. I’ve seen you.” The words were out before I could clamp my teeth and stop them.
Tallus’s brows rose, a wicked grin overtaking him. “Ohhh? And when did you see me dance, Guns?”
A flush raced up the back of my neck and burned my cheeks. “I… at Gasoline. When I used to…”
“Stalk me?”
Shamefully, I nodded. After twice witnessing his erotic moves on the dance floor with other horny men who couldn’t keep their hands off him, I’d learned to wait in the parking lot for Tallus’s nights to end lest I commit violent acts that would land me in prison. Tallus’s hold on me was powerful, even back then, and those gyrating moves, the fluidity of his sexy body, was imprinted into my mind in bold Technicolor. I’d jerked off to the memory more times than I could count, wishing those strangers were me.
Tallus leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “PS. That’s not dancing, Guns. I mean, not truly. That’s a bump and grind. It’s foreplay and takes zero skill. Not exactly what I would put on a resume when auditioning for Les Mis, but that’s not the point anymore. You watched me?” He slowly perused my body. “Did it turn you on?”
“It made me fucking homicidal. I wanted to tear those other men off you and break every one of their goddamn fingers for daring to touch you.”
“Aww. My sweet and ferocious cuddle bear.” His smile lit me up inside, erasing the shadow of remembered jealousy. “You could have joined me. I’d have ditched whatever guy had my attention for you in a heartbeat.”
“I don’t dance.”
“I told you. It’s not dancing.” He bit his lower lip seductively. “I could teach you.”
I snorted. “Not a chance. Gasoline isn’t my thing.”
“Our living room would work for a tutorial.”
“No.” The single word didn’t carry much conviction.
“Come on, Guns. It feels good rubbing up against a compact, willing body. Are you afraid you might enjoy yourself?”
Images of Tallus’s sultry, sweaty frame on the dance floor at Gasoline came roaring back. How many times had I fantasized about putting my arms around him in place of those random strangers? Feeling his damp skin under my palms, his torso hot against me. Guiding his hips as he ground his ass over my cock. Rubbing his erection through his pants. Dipping a hand beneath the waistband and discovering hard flesh. Stroking… Moaning my desires into his ear… Fucking him in the bathroom.
“D?”
I blinked back to reality as the waitress set a platter in the middle of the table. My cheeks flamed, and the front of my jeans grew tight. I shifted, alleviating pressure.
God fucking dammit.
Tallus hummed salaciously the instant the waitress left us alone. “I think we’re adding dancing to our to-do list.” He added unnecessary air quotes in case I needed a reminder that dancing was a euphemism for his bump-and-grind foreplay.
“I don’t… dance.” I added my own weak emphasis, my resolve incinerated by the inferno engulfing my system.
“Maybe not in our early days, but I bet you’d dance like a dream now.”
“I… can’t.”
“I’ll teach you, sweetheart.” Tallus helped himself to an array of kebabs. “Easy peasy.”
How had we gotten on this subject?
Acting. Right. We were talking about acting. I did this. Fuck me.
I scrambled for a segue, a new topic, something to douse the flames when a thought occurred to me. “Did you know I was there?”
Tallus licked a saucy finger and quirked a brow. “Where?”
“At Gasoline.” I’d always wondered if he played up those dancing encounters to piss me off.
Tallus chuckled as he pulled chunks of meat off a skewer with a piece of pita bread. He scanned the restaurant and lowered his voice. “Guns, I always knew when you were around. At Gas. When you followed me to work. When you sat outside my apartment. When Memphis and I were out shopping. Even when I ventured to the café for my morning latte. You weren’t as sneaky as you thought. Plus, I grew up an undersized twink in a conservative school. Out or not, I was the target of a lot of jock bullying. I grew eyes in the back of my head for safety.”
Befuddled, I absorbed his words. For years, I’d considered myself a skilled PI, particularly when it came to surveillance. To think Tallus had known about every instance I’d stalked him unsettled me.
“You seem surprised.”
I selected a few kebabs and transferred them to my plate, but I didn’t eat. I considered the hidden threat of Ace’s associates. The dozens of photographs taken of Tallus. The infiltration into Nana’s nursing home.
I’d been on guard, trying to locate Ace’s eyes since waking up in the alley. Was I that bad at my job, or was Tallus supremely observant? He didn’t realize he was being followed the night I was gone. Was that due to stress? Had his worry for me trumped his worry for himself?
He ate, watching as I rolled facts through my mind. Twice, he scanned the restaurant—something I should have been doing.
I briefly inspected the crowd. No one stood out. Everything was the same. “How did I give myself away? How did you know?”
Tallus filled his fork with meat. “Well, you weren’t that subtle. I knew your Jeep, and it was easy enough to spot from my window. I first noticed you out there on one of the nights you showed up at my door. I thought it was your vehicle, but your appearance confirmed it. I took note of your license plate. You kept a distance most of the time, but I picked up on a pattern. You never watched me from less than half a block away. Always a distance.
I cringed, wanting to melt into the floor and disappear. Those were the days of our hookups. The days of impersonal sex when Tallus would beg me to touch him, and I couldn’t. Those encounters were never good. Christ, it was… functional sex at best, and he’d said as much.
Functional sex was enough for a guy like me. Until it wasn’t. I hated disappointing Tallus. I hated walking away and seeing that look in his eyes. I hated the knot that grew in my belly every time I knocked on his door, certain he would tell me to fuck off. I had started to desire Tallus with a fervor I couldn’t ignore and wanted to be with him all the time. The obsession had made me stupid.
I picked at my food, still too nauseous to eat. “Why didn’t you report me?”
Tallus laughed. “Because I liked you, Guns. It didn’t creep me out. I was waiting for you to get your head out of your ass and admit you liked me too. And it worked. Here we are.”
“Here we are,” I repeated, brows knit. “Is the sex better?”
“Yeah, Diem. The sex is way better.”
But it wasn’t perfect. He still wanted things I hadn’t been able to give him.
He touched my hand. “Eat your dinner. It’s getting cold.”
For a while, we ate without speaking. My phone vibrated with a text before the platter was empty. The number displayed as unavailable. I angled the device so Tallus couldn’t see before opening it. I half feared it might be the Consigliere or one of his cronies, but it was Buren.
Clarence Audraine. DOB May 14, 1990. 200 Elm. Apt 312. Discharged himself Friday morning against doctor’s orders.
“Is that your buddy?” Tallus asked.
“Yeah.” I laid my phone flat and spun it to face him so he could read the message.
“Excellent. Let’s finish eating and make a house call, shall we?”
I wanted to object, take Tallus home, and lock the doors, but I’d promised he could help locate Clarence.
I was not naïve. Discovering Clarence’s home address meant nothing. The guy was on the run, not lounging at home, binge-watching Supernatural. When he didn’t answer his door, I would need to come up with an excuse for stage two in our plan.
How had I ended up in this nightmare?
18
Tallus
Someone was following us, and my PI boyfriend was utterly clueless.
Earlier, as Diem and I left the parking structure at headquarters, I noticed a guy sitting on a cement barrier, talking on the phone. The location was tucked away but not out of sight. For all intents and purposes, the man was unremarkable. Except his glittery gold Converse caught my attention.
I liked Converse. I owned several pairs for casual wear. With protanopia, my color spectrum was limited to blues, browns, and yellows, so when I shopped for footwear, I usually stuck to whites, blacks, or browns. Less chance of mismatching an outfit when Memphis wasn’t available to coordinate me.
When Converse released their Hi Glitter Gold All Stars, they tempted me, but by the time I decided I wanted to add them to my collection, the shoes were out of stock. I’d spent the money on a couple of pairs of new SAXX instead because a guy needed new fashionable underwear from time to time. I regretted nothing.
The guy at headquarters, sitting on a cement barrier and chatting on his cell with the glittery Converse, had stood out for no other reason than he wore the shoes I’d once sought to own.
At the bus stop, as we’d waited for Buren and I’d paced the curb texting Memphis, a pair of shimmery gold Converse crossed my path. I’d halted and glanced up because what were the chances I’d seen two people in the span of an hour wearing the same unique shoes?
Although I hadn’t consciously taken in the man’s appearance back at headquarters, I knew it was the same guy. Same dark jeans. Same yellowish-looking tee. The same brimmed ballcap that cast a shadow over his face, making it impossible to get a clear view of his features. But the damn shoes told me it was him.
At the bus stop, the man stood apart from the crowd. He’d kept his chin down the entire time, scrolling on his phone like he had no care in the world.
Diem might not have thought I was the best investigator—and his arguments were usually valid—but my high school bullying days had left me adept at knowing when I was being followed, and the Converse-wearing guy pinged on my radar for two reasons. One, we were a long way from the Toronto Police Headquarters building. It had taken over twenty minutes for Diem to drive us to our rendezvous point. Two, if the guy had been at my place of work and was now here, he must have owned a vehicle since taking public transportation would have been much slower. If that was the case, why was he waiting for a bus?
I watched him without watching him, feigning interest in a text conversation.
Diem’s squirrely behavior mirrored that morning’s when he’d peered out the windows in search of a threat. Did he see the guy? A quick study of Diem told me no. My boyfriend seemed to be seeking someone at length when the danger was much closer.
I considered Diem’s earlier warnings and worries. Instead of immediately alerting him to Mr. Converse, I played the part of a cuddly boyfriend and burrowed into his arms. If the man with the gold shoes was indeed following us, I didn’t want him to know I’d figured him out.
When Buren showed up at the same time as the bus, I got distracted. Only after Buren took off and Diem suggested we head home did I see Mr. Hi Glitter himself less than ten feet away, still waiting for the bus that had come and gone, blending with the newly formed crowd.
It was why I’d suggested we eat at the restaurant. I wanted to test a theory and prove to myself I wasn’t imagining things. Ten minutes after we sat down, Gold Glitter Converse waltzed in as though he was a regular customer, looking for a meal.
I secretly congratulated myself on my well-honed detective skills.
Diem had situated himself so that he faced the door. I waited for him to notice the obvious tail, but he didn’t. He kept looking past the man to a threat that had yet to appear. It was true. Sometimes, we didn’t see what was right in front of our faces. I wanted to shake Diem and say, he’s right there, but I didn’t.
I waited. I observed. Even Echo gave no sign of recognition and dozed under the table.
Since my boyfriend had been less than forthcoming about his encounter the other night, I decided it was only fair that I do my own reconnaissance to see if I could figure out what this was all about.
We were in public. The sun was still up. People meandered the streets of downtown, and the restaurant was bustling with a dinner crowd. The man wasn’t about to make a move.
As we left the restaurant, I pretended to get a text from Memphis, but instead, I pulled up my camera app and snapped a picture of Hi Glitter. It wasn’t a great shot—he still wore the ballcap—but it was something.
Diem took us to Clarence Audraine’s address, obsessively checking the rearview mirror the entire way. I figured this would be the time we would lose our tail since the guy hadn’t left the restaurant with us.
After buzzing the correct unit a dozen times with no response, I nudged Diem. “Now what, big guy?”
Echo’s expression seemed to ask the same thing.
Diem didn’t answer and grumbled as he barreled from the vestibule and paced the exterior of the building, glancing at the row of third-floor balconies as though he might see Clarence lounging on a deck chair, enjoying a margarita.
“I don’t think he’s home, D.”
Another grunt. Diem continued his circuit of the building.
“Full incommunicado mode, I see. Aww, the good old days. I’d say I miss them, but I don’t. What are we doing?”
Diem didn’t answer.
“We can come back tomorrow,” I suggested. “Maybe Clarence stepped out, and…” A thought struck. “Hey, D? Why do you think he discharged himself from the hospital? I mean, the guy was stabbed. On that note. Shouldn’t he be home resting?”
Diem paused on a service road beside a line of dumpsters at the back of the building. Echo sniffed at the extreme reaches of her leash. The balconies didn’t extend to this side, but a line of windows in a neat row climbed to the top floor. I assumed they marked the ends of interior hallways.
With hands on his hips, Diem stared, studied, and squinted as though piecing something together.
“Hello? Earth to Diem. What are we doing?” I asked again.
My surly boyfriend still didn’t answer. He grumbled something appropriately incoherent and returned to the main street and front of the building, studying it anew.
“Oh, good grief.” I rolled my eyes and waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Echo got bored and lay at Diem’s feet with an appropriate huff.
“Same, girl. Same.”
We’d parked half a block away, around a corner and down a short street. When I glanced in that direction, longing to call it a day, who did I see sauntering along the sidewalk but Mr. Converse Shoes himself.
“Oh fuck.” I rerouted my attention to the dog as though I hadn’t noticed, but surreptitiously watched the man’s approach.
By now, I recognized him despite the new accessories he had acquired. He carried a backpack over one shoulder and wore sunglasses. The ever-present phone remained pressed to his ear. That time, a one-sided conversation drifted toward me, but it wasn’t English.
