Ro had given him his user name and password into the special database that apparently was exclusive to investigators, and Paris knew why after first getting into it - it was fucking scary. The sheer amount of shit you could find on people! He once started a search on himself and stopped, because it freaked him out a bit. And he was Canadian! He assumed the database would only cover him since he’d been in the States, but oh no, this database went over the border. He almost searched Roan, but then thought better of it.

Roan had left behind notes from the Humanity First group therapy/bitch session, and he decided to make himself quasi-useful by investigating the woman that gave Ro such a bad feeling, Karen Hammond.

She was only thirty six, which shocked the hell out of Paris; he was sure she was in her forties. Man, she looked really shitty for her age. Was she a heavy smoker or drinker? That kind of info wasn’t in the database, but nearly everything else was. She lived in a trailer park in a really sad suburban outskirt known as Frederickson, and she owned the trailer (and had for the past eight years) but not the land she was residing on. Twice divorced, she had four kids: Noah, 20, Lacey and Joshua, both 18 (fraternal twins), and Kaitlin, 14, deceased (the dead, cat chasing daughter that had made her so vengeful). She‘d worked at the Rite-Aid down on Hauser for the past six months. Karen had some minor arrests on her record, ranging from driving under the influence (he knew it - drinker), misdemeanor assault, a domestic violence charge that was dropped (pressed by her second soon to be ex-husband; she scratched his face and hit him with a coffee pot), public nuisance, and some neighbors of hers once got a restraining order on her when she lived down in Redding. She wasn’t an emotionally stable person, that was pretty obvious, but he could almost hear Ro saying in his head “None of this adds up to serial killer”. Which was true and fair enough. (Ro was going to make him an investigator if it killed him.) It did make her a good suspect, though. She was a troubled woman who really didn’t have much to lose, and wasn’t adverse to resorting to violence. But again, that Roan voice: “Not enough.”

Now what? He input the names of a couple of other people who had been there and whose names Ro had made a note of, but none of them were nearly as interesting as Karen. One guy, Vince Hempstead, had quite a lengthy juvenile record, but that meant next to nothing, especially since most of those were for vandalism and shoplifting. Karen still remained the most viable “potential” in the crowd.

He switched the CD to Thom Yorke and went to grab a Pepsi when the phone rang. Inwardly he cringed, sure it was Annie again, but when it went to the machine, he got a surprise. “Paris, it’s Diego. If you’re there, pick up, it’s an emergency.”

Diego was calling for him? Weirdness. It wasn’t that they didn’t get on okay, because they did; Diego was cute and smart, although a bit type A, and he really didn’t get how he and Roan could’ve had a relationship, no matter how brief. Roan was very much a type B, in spite of his personal intensity, and it just seemed like a recipe for disaster. Being smart and gifted with a cutting wit were about the only things Roan and Diego had in common; from thereon in, it was just conflict.

He just had a sudden awful feeling about this and darted over to the phone to pick it up. “I’m here. It’s not about Ro, is it?”

He sighed heavily, and Paris felt his stomach just drop to the floor. Oh god no. “Look, he’s okay,” Diego began, which wasn’t the most heartening way to begin a conversation. “He got incredibly lucky, which is actually par for the course with him, but don’t tell him I said that - I’ll never hear the end of it.”

He wasn’t sure he could speak for a moment. “What the fuck happened?”

“He was shot. He -”

“Shot?” It felt like someone had injected liquid nitrogen straight into his circulatory system. “What? Who shot him? Where was he shot? Is he … are you at County?”

“I am. I told you Paris, he’s fine, he never even lost consciousness. Which is creepy when you’re trying to examine a wound and your patient keeps criticizing it -”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, trying to remember which coat he had the GTO keys in.

“He’s in stable condition,” Diego said, in his low, calm paramedic voice. It was the professional one he used to calm the upset and panicked, and Paris mildly resented hearing it. He wasn’t panicking yet; he thought he was holding in the hysterical scream quite well. “He lost some blood so they’re going to keep him here, but he’s being a total dickhead about that. Maybe you can talk him into staying overnight before he tries storming out of here dragging an i.v. stand.”

“I don’t think even I’m that good,” he replied, and told Diego he’d see him in twenty minutes - fifteen if he could open up the throttle. Only after he hung up did he realize that Diego never told him where Ro had been shot, or how much blood he had lost. Christ, now his imagination was just going to run wild.

He went up to the bedroom to get his jacket, the one with the GTO keys, but before he even knew what he was doing he was crouched in front of the dresser, opening the lowest drawer. There, beneath some folded shirts that Roan only kept around as “schlep clothes” (where Roan had picked up so much Yiddish he wasn’t sure, although he had said when he was a teen he dated this “nice Jewish boy” he met at a Cramps concert), was a small cherry wood case, too long and flat to be a jewelry box, although it was nice enough. Inside was the “spare gun”, the Beretta Cheetah (yes, that was its actual name - Roan thought it was kind of funny), along with a spare ammunition clip. He didn’t need the clip, though, as the gun was fully loaded, the safety on. Buried among the shirts was a belt clip holster; hanging in the closet was a shoulder holster rig. Where you wanted the holster depended on what situation you were going into, what you could conceal, what you were more comfortable with. Paris had never liked the shoulder holster, although it looked quite manly on Ro.

He knew how to shoot. He had an air rifle and pistol as a kid, although he never used them for much beyond target practice and mild vandalism (he was never into killing anything, not even animals, which may have been why waking up covered in blood and bits of skin was such a shock). Roan had also walked him through the basics on the Beretta and the Sig Sauer, on the off chance he ever had to use them. Paris had paid attention but hated the idea, as he wasn’t a fan of guns - real guns, ones that could kill so easily and indiscriminately.

But now he clipped on the belt holster and snugged the Beretta inside before retrieving his jacket and heading downstairs. Someone shot Roan; the very idea had turned him to solid ice. He wanted the fucker to come back, to show his face, because Paris had a surprise for him. Shoot his lover, would he? Two could play that game, and Paris was willing to bet he was a better shot.

But as he headed out, all he could think was the killer had come calling. And he wondered if he should pay a visit to Eli, and see if his alibi held up. He wondered what he’d do if it didn’t.

****

He just reached the hospital when his cell went off, Franz Ferdinand’s “Michael” startling the shit out of him. He grabbed his phone and turned it off, not caring who was calling or why. Right now, he only had room in his head for Roan.

Even though it wasn’t nearly hospital “prime time” hours (pretty much any time after sunset, according to Diego), the waiting room seemed unbelievably crowded and noisy, and he cringed slightly at the intrusion on his perfect fear and perfect rage. He had to ask the nurse at the desk twice what room they were keeping Roan in, and then had to clarify he wasn’t asking about Joan. Part of him just wanted to barge off and find him himself, but this was a huge hospital and he had no doubt that he’d get lost easily.

She was telling him these weren’t visiting hours when Diego showed up in his dark blue paramedic‘s jacket, waved at the nurse, and said “He’s with me,” before grabbing him by the arm and pulling him off down one of the corridors.

“Thank you,” Paris told him, as soon as they ducked into an elevator.

“I figured you might need the help. It’s a zoo around here.” Diego said it so casually it was almost impossible to tell it was a lie, but it was. Once again, he was being kind.

Paris always felt big next to Diego. He wasn’t short, he was just so thin; he was so type A he seemed to have a super metabolism, one that burned up the calories almost as fast as he could put them in, although he imagined his job probably helped as well. He was a good looking guy, with cafe au lait skin and large, dark eyes, curly black hair cut short and tight to the scalp (which flattered his delicate bone structure, and boy did he know it), so it was easy to see what Roan saw in him, but it was also easy to discern why it didn’t work. He seemed to hum with energy even standing still, and he knew those type of people got on Roan’s nerves after a very short period of time. “How is he doing?” Paris asked. “What happened?”

“Again, he’s fine; he must be fine if he’s still being a stubborn asshole. And from what he told the cops, it was essentially a drive by.”

“What?”

“Somebody shot at him and this kid he was with on Brazil Street, barely slowing down to do the job. Roan put a couple rounds in their vehicle, though, and they took off. They shot out a few windows and put some holes in his car, but Roan only caught a single bullet, which was damn lucky. Those guys had an automatic or something.”

“Where was he shot?”

“Upper left quadrant of the chest.” Diego held up his hands in a warding off gesture even as Paris took a breath to speak. “It totally missed his heart; it was a couple inches off. It passed through him on a straight line trajectory - which is good - and the worst he got out of it was some torn muscles and blood loss. He will be fine; he’ll recover. Although they want to get him into surgery to repair some of the muscle damage and he’s refusing. God knows why. I think Roan just likes being a stubborn butthead sometimes.”

The elevator’s slow ascent stopped and the doors opened with a faint chiming sound, disgorging them on a floor he vaguely recognized as a sealed part of the ICU. Because Roan was infected and his blood was full of a contagion, he had to be kept in a special wing.

Paris’s head was spinning with all this information, his heart trip-hammering, and he followed Diego out feeling numb. The bullet missed his heart by a couple of inches? Jesus Christ. (He didn’t care about his pacifist stand at the moment - if he saw that fucker he was dead. He’d punch him until something in him broke, then he’d shoot him. Was he becoming very American, bitter, or some combination of the two?)

As they walked down the white tiled corridor with its rainbow of colored lines on the walls leading to various places, a lanky young blond kid who looked like one of the “junior cruisers” (his and Randi’s term for the barely legal, extremely horny young guys who’d pretty much fuck anyone who smiled at them) who hung around the fringes of Panic - but was strangely wearing a doctor’s pale green scrub top - stood up from the molded plastic chair he’d been sitting in, and started to say something, but he paused and stared at him in shock instead. “Oh Christ, you’re even better looking in real light,” he breathed.

Paris glared at him. “Do I know you?”

Diego stepped forward, nearly inserting himself between him and the junior cruiser, as if afraid Paris might haul off and smack him. “This is Matt Skouris, he was with Roan at the scene, and coincidentally his mother was the doctor that treated him once we reached the ER.”

“I called and asked her to see him when they got here,” Matt said, almost meekly. “She’s a real hard ass, y’know, but she’s a great doctor.”

“Why the hell were you there?” He snapped, feeling an inexplicable surge of anger towards this kid. Roan probably took the bullet for him, didn’t he? Roan would do that; he would take a bullet for a complete stranger because that was sadly the kind of guy he was. He was a born protector.

Matt looked genuinely surprised and took a step back, as if he intuited Paris’s rage level accurately. “Uh, I, um, went with him to Ashley’s apartment. I had the key, y’know, I had to let him in -”

He nodded and gestured sharply for him to stop, as he really didn’t want to have a discussion with anyone right now. “Yeah, okay, Ro said something about that.” He shifted his gaze to Diego. “Where is he?”

Diego pointed to a door on the left side of the hall, barely three meters away. He headed straight for it, and Matt called after him, “Um, nice to meet you …”

“Tell him to stop being such a fuckhead,” Diego added emphatically.

As soon as he was inside and the door slap closed behind him, Paris found himself hammered by a sudden surge of emotion. He’d been okay up to this point; he’d held it together with what he felt was startlingly great aplomb. But now he was in a tiny ivory walled hospital room that smelled of disinfectant and blood, with Roan looking unusually small and pale in a bed of starched white sheets and blankets, and he found it hard to breathe due to the sheer size of the lump in his throat. Somebody had tried to kill him - the killer had tried to add him to the list. Holy fuck. That was wrong on several levels, but the most basic one was Paris was supposed to die first, not Roan. The tiger was going to kill him from the inside out, and Roan would survive because he always survived.

But before he could completely tear up, Roan looked at him, his eerie green eyes slightly glazed, and said, “Good, somebody who can get me the fuck out of here.”

This startled the tears back in his eye sockets. “What?”

Roan sat up, making the bags on the i.v. stands sway slightly as he threw his legs over the side and started to slide out of bed. “I ain’t staying here. I’m fine; they’re overreacting. Fucking doctors.”

Paris rushed to his side as he attempted to stand and almost fell over. He steadied him, accidentally hitting one of the tubes that connected him to the i.v. bags (one was filled with clear fluid, the other was filled with something that wasn‘t), and held him firmly by the shoulders. “You are not going anywhere. Get back in bed.”

Ro glared at him. Although his usual fire was there, that odd glaze remained. Was he in shock? “Don’t baby me. I’m fine.”

“Fine? You were shot in the fucking chest! That earns you a time out.”

He grunted in disgust. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

“Fuck you, Black Knight.” He grabbed Roan by the face and stared straight into his eyes, making sure he had his full attention before he spoke. “You are going to get back into that bed and tell me what happened. You are going to answer my questions, and then I’ll think about getting you out of here. If you don’t, I’m going to leave without you. Understand?”

He stared at him sullenly. “This is stupid.”

“I don’t care.” He dropped his hands to his shoulders and forced him to sit down. Normally he couldn’t, but Ro was clearly not at his best at the moment. For the first time, he actually noticed that he was wearing one of those awful paper hospital gowns, and it made him look that much more pale. Shit, how much blood had he lost? “Humor me.”

Ro rolled his eyes, but he sat back, slumping against his pillows. “Why’d you bring the Beretta?”

“What?”

“I can smell the gun oil on you. You’re not planning to go all Death Wish on me, are you? ‘Cause that’s my job, not yours.”

Sometimes that super smelling thing could be such a pain in the ass. “What happened?”

He told him, in a slow but concise monotone. How could he remember so many details when he was being shot at? It was typical of him, but no less bizarre. So there were two killers, or at the very least an active accomplice - did that kick Karen Hammond off the suspect list?

While he listened, he casually brushed the hair out of Roan’s eyes - his hair was growing out fast again - and noticed how cool his skin was to the touch. He let his hand trail down to the side of his throat, where he unobtrusively felt his pulse through his neck. It was a bit slower than usual, but reassuringly strong and steady. But his eyelids were heavy and kept threatening to close, even though Ro kept fighting it like the stubborn bastard he was. As soon as he was done telling the story, Paris kissed him gently on the forehead, and told him, “Get some rest. I’ll go talk to the doctor and see when I can get you out of here, okay?”

His eyes narrowed angrily and he scowled, unnaturally pale lips twisting downwards. “No, get me outta here now. I’ll sleep at home.”

“Diego told me you need surgery and you’re refusing it. Why?”

“I don’t need surgery. I can repair my muscles myself.”

He took a moment to try and make sense out of that, but failed. “With what? A staple gun?”

Ro stared at him in dazed disbelief. “No. If I can trigger a partial change, the muscles will fix themselves.”

“Are you hearing what you’re saying?”

“Oh come on Par, you know what happens when we change: bones break and reset, muscles tear and reattach themselves. It’s the trauma that eventually kills us all, right? If I hurt enough or get angry enough, I can get a partial change that I can control as long as I don’t go too far over the edge. But those fucks drugged me after I tore my i.v.s out -”

“You what?” He looked at his arm, and sure enough, where the tubes entered his skin, they were wrapped up with what seemed to be an excessive amount of gauze and tape.

“ - and I have no idea what they gave me, but it makes me feel too good to be angry. Also, I tried punching the wound, but I seemed too ready for it, braced for it. It didn’t work. Oh hey, that gives me an idea. You punch me.”

Now he knew he was out of his goddamn mind. “What the fuck did they give you, angel dust?”

Roan slipped one arm out of his paper gown, and then realized he wasn’t going to get the other out with the tubes in the way, so he just ripped it down until he exposed a large, hand sized rectangular gauze p ad taped to his chest. There were tiny speckles of blood on it. “I know I can do it. Remember when I punched out the deadbolt? I can manage a partial change. I just need some stimulus, apparently - believe me, I have tried without it. It’s not enough. Just punch the wound, as hard as you can. It’ll hurt me for a second, but it’ll help me a hell of a lot more. Come on.”

“No! I am not going to punch you! Jesus …”

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this, but you can see why, right? It’s not Human to be able to change your musculature. But I can, and I can be back on my feet by tonight; I don’t need to be laid up for a week due to surgery. I need to get back out there.”

This was completely freaky, and yet the plea was obvious in his voice. What did you do in a situation like this? He certainly wasn’t going to hurt him. It had to be the drugs, right? Maybe he was serious about being able to trigger a partial change, but … for some reason, he found it hard to wrap his brain around it. What he needed to be was sober so they could discuss this. He sat on the edge of the bed and slid his arm around his shoulders. Roan needed to stop fighting the drugs and sleep, and he knew exactly how to make it happen. He couldn’t talk him into it, but he could trick him into it.

“I started investigating Karen Hammond. I found out a couple of interesting things,” he said, launching into a slow, steady monologue in a quiet voice, and started gently stroking the back of Roan’s neck. He made sure he told him the truth but nothing actually interesting, and he took his damn time about it. It took a few minutes, but finally Ro slumped against him, the drugs overwhelming him. Took long enough. If willpower alone could blast holes in mountains, the Cascades would look like Swiss cheese once Roan was through with them.

A nurse came in, but she was a frightening looking thing, wearing gloves up to her elbows and a thick surgical mask over her nose and mouth. He forgot they were treated like plague victims; it was easy to forget when you lived in your own little world, far from “normal” people.

She wanted him out of there so he went, but he made sure Roan was asleep and still sleeping before he left, and once out in the hall he felt strangely drained. He slumped in one of the plastic chairs sporadically placed throughout the corridor, and he was relieved that Diego wasn’t loitering out here. That damn junior cruiser was still here, but he was far down the hall, talking to a female doctor with short blonde hair the exact same color as his. Obviously that was his mother, and he caught a random bit of conversation. The kid was saying “ - no I’m not using again, that had nothing to do with this -”

His rage had cooled to a hard lump in his stomach, but he still felt like punching something (although not Roan). So he could trigger a partial change? Could he trigger a full one? That was the next logical step wasn’t it? Of course he’d never heard of anyone actually being able to do that, but then again he’d never heard of someone spending more time in cat form than Human form until he met Michael Henstridge. The virus children, the ones with the viral DNA in their basic genetic make up, were starting to change everything they knew about it, and they knew so little about this disease even after all this time. It was like they were rewriting the laws of physics as they went along.

He wondered what kind of experimenting Roan had done when he snuck out late at night, how far he had pushed the boundaries, and if that was why he was so scared to talk about it. Or if he didn’t talk about it because Paris really wasn’t one of his kind. He was, he was infected, but he wasn’t really, because he started off as Human and became otherwise. Roan had always been a bit more than that.

He checked his cell if only to get his mind off this topic, and after hoping it wasn’t Annie calling him (his cell phone number wasn’t listed to his knowledge, but a lawyer had to have resources beyond the norm), he realized the message left was even stranger. “Hi Kevin, this is Tim Barlow, from the Humanity First group the other night. I know this is last minute, but we’re having a private meeting tonight at eight thirty at 817 Roland Avenue, and we’d be glad to have you there if you can make it. No need to call back, just come on by, although if you can’t make it there should be another one in a week or two. And also, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone. As I said, this is a private meeting, personal invitees only. So … anyway, hope to see you there. Bye.”

Okay, he hadn’t been expecting that. He - no, sorry, Kevin Stiles, that prick from the lacrosse team - must have passed inspection, whatever that was. Or, considering the timing, it was a trap.

Could have gone either way, couldn’t it? It was a meeting at a private household because potentially illegal activity would be discussed - or it was a set up because they figured out he was infected and wanted to find out how much he knew in a setting where they wouldn’t be bothered by any pesky witnesses.

The hubbub from Roan joining the police force had flared and died years ago (and his resignation was never actually covered), but it was possible that someone had recognized him in spite of his pseudonym. And because he was an infected that dared to get close, they had him shot today, and now they were going to privately bring in his friend after fucking the hit up. He would be an easier mark up close and personal. Was that it? Did these fucks have Roan shot? Were they planning something similar for him?

Paris knew if there were any doubts that he shouldn’t risk it, he shouldn’t go, and if Ro were awake and not as high as the International Space Station he’d also give him an emphatic “Hell no, you don’t go”. But his rage flared anew, a burning warmth that actually felt good, and he realized he absolutely had to go. If these assholes tried to kill Roan, he wanted to know right this goddamn second. If they wanted to try something with him, they were free to do so.

But if they expected him to go without a fight, they were in for one hell of a nasty shock.

Finally - and as politely as he could - he asked for Ashley’s key. Matt gulped down his third glass of Coke (no wonder he was so jazzed) and stood up, digging in his pants pocket. “Sure, let’s go.”

Roan glared at him, but he seemed oblivious to it. “I’m going alone. By trespassing on a closed crime scene, we’re committing a crime.”

Matt found the key and pulled it out. It was alone on a key chain that doubled as a bottle opener. “Not if you’re with me. I have her key, and I’ll just say I’m like checking on her plants or something. You’re simply with me.”

He almost admired his gall. “No way in hell they’ll buy that.”

Matt made a “tsk” noise and rolled his eyes. “Yeah they will. If we get caught, let me do the talking. I’ll so annoy the shit out of them they’ll agree to anything to make me shut up and go away.”

Now Roan did briefly admire his gall. “You know?”

“What, that I talk too much? I have ears, sweetie, how could I not know? Sometimes even I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about; it just comes gushing out, y’know? I call it diarrhea of the mouth.” He jingled the key, and pulled his black motocross style leather jacket off the back of his chair. “We goin’?”

Roan paid the bill even though he‘d hardly had anything, simply because he figured baristas just couldn’t make that much. Matt had walked here - he lived with a roommate in an apartment four blocks away - so they took the Mustang by default.

It was unlikely they’d get caught, it was just as excuse to try and escape Chatty Cathy in the passenger seat (and yes, he kept rattling on, although Roan tuned him out). But just venturing into the Wildwood seemed like a risky proposition, and he wondered how Ashley had managed it on a daily basis. She was either very brave or very desperate.

The Wildwood looked exactly the same as it has the last time he’d been here, two years ago on a domestic violence call. It was a square six story apartment block with brick facing that had faded to a sickly brownish grey and was crumbling like rotted teeth. Gang tags were the only true spots of color, warped letters and numerals as bloated as water logged corpses, their meaning cryptically elusive to most people. All the first floor windows either had bars or were simply boarded over.

If defeat looked like anything, it looked like the Wildwood.

“Wow, this looks like a crack house I once went to,” Matt commented, following Roan into the piss soaked ”lobby” of the building. He didn’t ask, because he really didn’t want to know.

Inside the Wildwood it was murky dark, like they were submerged beneath a polluted lake, and the smell of urine, cooked food, spilled beer, and the sickly sweet and sharply chemical smell of crack rendered the hallways a pungent, unpleasant stew. Roan had cinnamon gum in his coat pocket and popped a stick in his mouth, using its overwhelming smell and taste to block out everything else. It was mostly successful.

Ashley lived on the third floor, third apartment on the left. Yellow crime scene tape still crisscrossed the whitewashed door, although someone had scrawled on it in thick black ink Kitty fucker. That warning was probably the only reason the tape hadn’t been broken - who was going to touch anything a kitty fucker had touched and possibly contaminated with their infected blood?

Matt - who had been blessedly silent since they entered the building - carefully unlocked the door, and they both went in, ducking under the tape and being careful not to break it. Inside, Ashley’s apartment was even darker than the hallway, and the smell of blood and death was so overpowering that Roan rocked back on his heels. Son of a bitch, no one had cleaned it up yet had they?

Matt must have smelled a bit of it, as he cupped his hand over his nose and mouth, but his eyes widened as he saw the metal shutters that blocked out every scrap of light. “Whoa.”

“She was infected,” he explained. “If you’re going into your transformational phase, you have to block the windows, otherwise you’re liable to jump through them or die trying.”

“Oh. I didn’t think she was kinky. She never struck me that way, y’know? She actually seemed kinda lonely.”

Roan’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, although he pulled out the small Maglite he always carried with him. (Essential P.I. tools: cell phone, digital camera, flashlight, notebook, a laptop if you could carry it and had a wi-fi connection, and maybe a gun, but only if you were really paranoid.) He could have turned on a light - no one was going to see it from the street as long as they kept the shutters down - but he didn’t want to lose what he had of his “night vision” right now. Also, if he could keep Matt from seeing the huge rusty brown stain on the cheap yellowish industrial carpet, he felt things would go better. “No friends, no boyfriend and/or girlfriend? Sounds lonely.”

“Yeah.” Matt fumbled something out of his coat pocket, and Roan didn’t really see what until he snapped it, and a bright but icy blue glow emanated from it. It actually lit up the area around Matt quite well.

“Do you always carry a glow stick?” he wondered, kind of amused. Somehow it figured a party guy like Matt would just happen to have a glow stick handy.

“Naw, I just remembered the last time I wore this coat, I was at Panic. Hey, if you’re gay, how come I’ve never seen you there?”

Panic was the hot gay nightclub in town, and he was sure the little bit of black script at the base of the glow stick identified it as coming from there. “I’m not into the nightclub scene. It’s too … techno for me.”

“Oh man, you’re missing out. You need to come down if only to see this guy who shows up like every other coupla weeks. Don’t know his name, but we call him the Hottie down there, ‘cause he is. I mean he’s fucking gorgeous; you’d cut off your left nut to be with this guy. He has guys lining up three deep to dance with him, and ten deep to buy him drinks. He always comes with this fag hag, she looks like a young Margaret Cho, and he’s just the world’s biggest cock tease, y’know? He’s got great moves, he’s cute, he looks like he’s got a rippin’ bod, but he always says he only comes to dance and ain’t interested in hooking up, y’know? It’s as frustrating as hell, but god, it’s worth the sexual frustration just to watch him for a couple of hours.”

Hearing this description, he suddenly wondered how small a gay subculture it was. “Is he about six foot three, two ten, with black hair and blue eyes?”

He nodded eagerly, eyes showing his happy surprise. “Hey, you’ve seen him? Isn’t he just to die for? You wouldn’t think such a solid slab of man meat could be as graceful as he is, but wow, he’s just all kinds of lust bait. And that ass! God, I just want to grab him and -”

“That’s my boyfriend.”

He stared at him levelly, the blue light casting bruised shadows on his face. “You’re shitting me.”

“No. I sort of doubt there’s two gay guys in town that match that description.” And he couldn’t imagine Randi being thrilled with that “Margaret Cho” comment. In fact, he could imagine her “Oh, I bet you think all Asians look alike” rant, as he’d heard her give it to a clearly embarrassed man in the parking lot at work once. A shrinking violet she wasn’t.

Matt held his gaze for a long moment, attempting to judge his veracity. “Holy shit. I always wondered who could land him, and now I know: another hottie. Makes sense, y’know. Uh, does that mean I have to stop talking about him?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Damn, he was distracting me from the smell.” He moved the glow stick around, lighting up spots of the small, austere apartment as well as leaving brief blue trails in the air, and asked, “So what are we looking for exactly?”

“We?”

“I’m not totally useless. I got a great head for, uh … remembering things. In fact, I can remember this one time when -” he froze, looking down at something that had been caught in the narrow scope of his light. As he bent down for a better look, Roan already knew what he’d just discovered - that huge, dark stain. “Is that, uh …”

“Yep.”

He looked down at it a moment, transfixed, then slapped his hand over his mouth, the color draining from his face with a frightening rapidity, and he dropped his glow stick as he turned and bolted into the small bathroom. Since he didn’t have time to close the door, he could hear him vomiting quite clearly. See, this is why he preferred doing things on his own.

The apartment was tiny, enough so that Roan figured Ashley must have been a small cat, perhaps a cougar, to keep from breaking out of here. The living room and kitchenette were separated only by their floors - the living room had the carpet, while the thin strip of floor that marked off the kitchen was cheap, peeling linoleum with an alternating square pattern. The walk in closet sized room on the right was the bedroom, and the tinier spare closet sized room straight ahead was the bathroom where Matt was puking up his lunch. He figured it was a good thing the lights were off, as the apartment would probably be more depressing if he could see it clearly.

He crouched down to pick up Matt’s glow stick, which had rolled towards the base of the avocado green refrigerator, a relic from the ‘80’s if not the ‘70’s. It was close up that he noticed a thin magnet advertising a pizza place was stuck to the fridge’s bottom metal grill, and he caught a glimpse of an edge of white paper on the floor, wedged between the fridge and the kitchen cabinet. The magnet must have been holding up the paper and both had slipped down.

He pulled out the paper and wasn’t surprised to find it was a business card with the logo “New Horizons” on the front, and on the back there was a handwritten note about an appointment with Doctor Johnson, which was at three thirty next Wednesday. There was an appointment she was never going to make.

He’d heard of New Horizons; it was a hodgepodge of services for the infected, one of those liberal social policy compromises that made this city so attractive to the infected. They probably had a ton of Doctor Johnsons that worked out of there, but he thought it would be worth checking out. It was just a shame that it didn’t say what kind of doctor Johnson was - a dentist, a G.P., a psychiatrist, hell, maybe even a nutritionist (they had a whole bunch of odd services available, some very questionable).

Matt had finally stopped retching, and turned on the taps to rinse out his mouth before he came out. Roan had tucked the appointment card in his pocket and picked up the glow stick, which he handed to Matt as soon as he rejoined him. “I’m sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. He still looked quite pale.

“It’s okay. But you see why I didn’t want you to come here? She was your friend; this has to hurt.”

“She wasn’t my friend. I wanted to be friends, but she so was scared. I didn’t get it at all.”

“What was she scared of?”

He shrugged, grimacing slightly. “I dunno. Being infected? Trusting people? She musta got screwed over pretty badly.”

So he wasn’t talking about a specific person. Too bad; that would have made his job easier.

A cursory search turned up nothing of note, nothing as interesting as the card from the New Horizons center. Matt remained oddly quiet and trailed behind him, embarrassed about barfing and afraid of what he might find if he wasn’t careful. The kid really shouldn’t have been here; he felt kind of bad for him.

They left, and Matt remained strangely cowed. By the time they left the building, the sky remained gunmetal grey but the rain was no more than a cool mist, the kind that drenched you even better than a downpour. They had to walk over to the next block, as there was no way he was parking the Mustang around here, and it was then that Matt asked, “What’s his name?”

“Whose?”

“Your boyfriend, the Hottie.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about that anymore.”

“Oh c’mon, I’m dying of curiosity over here. Also it’ll take my mind off things.”

He weighed precisely how much he should care with the possibility that it didn’t really matter. He was honestly surprised that everyone at Panic didn’t know Paris by his first name by now. Then again, maybe he never said so he never got stalked. “I’ll have to check in with him first. He might go out with a pseudonym.”

“Come on, dude! That’s so not fair. But hey, why don’t you ever go out with him, y’know? Why is he always out with the fag hag?”

“She’s his best friend. Also, he usually goes out with her when I’m busy.” There was no point in telling him when he was in the transitional phase of his virus. Matt could know he was “in the tribe”, but he didn’t need to know he was infected. He didn’t need the sympathy. “And as I said, I hate the club scene.”

“Why? You’d be a hit.”

“You’d be surprised how little I care about that.”

He grinned broadly, an expression that lit up his face and seemed to bring some color back to his cheeks. “I bet I wouldn’t.”

Yeah, perhaps not.

The next block over had lots of sad little shops: a corner store, a barbershop, one of those cheap teriyaki places that just seemed to spring up out of nowhere, a liquor store with extravagantly barred windows, that kind of thing. A downtown neighborhood too poor to qualify for strip mall status, but still losing a monumental amount of business to the strip malls and big box stores in the neighboring outskirts and suburbs. Almost anyone who had the ability to shop elsewhere did, so these shops were dying a slow, crumbling death, usually reflected in their dirty windows and scabby facades. Only the liquor store would probably survive.

He’d parked the Mustang beside the curb in front of the teriyaki place, the only open slot when they drove up, but as they came up the street he realized the car was sitting kind of funny in the back. He stepped out onto the curb as they approached, and checked out the side of the car that faced the street. Just as he feared, the back tire had been slashed; there was a deep, long gash he could put his fingers in.

He felt the shadow of Matt behind him, and he whistled low. “I’d say you ran over a nail, but I don’t think so.”

“Slashed with a knife. Somebody really hated this tire.” Or him; hating him was clearly more likely. But that raised a couple of troubling questions.

Okay, now he was being paranoid again. It was probably just a bored kid who got a kick out of vandalizing other people’s rides; he should probably consider himself lucky that the asshole didn’t key the car - that really would have pissed Paris off.

“Gonna call triple A?”

He shook his head, standing up and attempting to brush the grime on his hands off on his pant legs. “I got a spare in the trunk.”

Matt stared at him in wide eyed shock. “You can change a tire? Really? I can barely pump my own gas.”

Roan stared at him in open disbelief. “I’m sorry, but no one is that femme.”

He let out a breathless laugh. “I am, seriously. I only had a car for a year before I sold it for coke, and at that time I’d had my license suspended anyways, so I didn’t think losing it would be a big deal, y’know. I haven’t had a car since.”

Roan dug out his car keys and sifted out the trunk key. “You’re saving yourself a lot of money.”

“Probably, but I’ve saved more being off the coke, y’know. It’s kinda expensive … well, the good stuff is. I mean there’s a lot of shit stuff on the market, people who put in too much filler, y’know, shit that doesn’t do anything -”

Roan had pretty much tuned him out at this point - he really didn’t want to know how you quality shopped for cocaine - but he’d just moved around to the trunk when he heard a loud but well tuned engine, purring like a panther. Why the hell did it strike him as odd?

Roan didn’t know, and wasn’t sure he would ever know. Something made him turn and look, and he saw a dark green Jeep Grand Cherokee speeding down the street, so clean it almost shined, and he glanced down at the license plate to see that something had been inserted into the frame - Paper? Masking tape? - something that totally obscured the plate. Its windows were also tinted not so much dark as complete ebony.

That was his only warning.

He was already moving up to the sidewalk, glad he decided to wear his Sig Sauer for the walk to the Wildwood, when the person in the passenger seat opened fire. Roan had already shoved Matt brutally aside, throwing him down behind the Mustang, as he pulled his gun and took aim even as he threw himself behind the car.

Time slowed to a crawl, and he could see everything with crystal clarity, even though he didn’t think he should have been able to. The gun barrel was sticking out of the open passenger window, and the person behind the gun was a dark blur. Were they wearing a ski mask? He saw the flashes from the muzzle, heard the shots (which were always less than impressive; they were loud, but not quite the cannon blasts you usually heard in films) and heard glass breaking as the gunmen sprayed bullets wildly, shattering some of the windows of the Mustang and a window of the teriyaki joint. He also felt something hit him in the upper left side of his chest, but he didn’t know if it was shrapnel or what; it was more force than pain. He squeezed off two shots of his own before the Mustang obscured his view, and he knew they hit. He saw one shatter the passenger window and another disappeared in a dull thunk of impact, and he was sure it’d hit the door.

By the time he hit the pavement, the impact jarring his body, he heard the squeal of acceleration, the skid of tires on a wet road, and the Jeep tore around the corner, causing a car at the intersection to blare its horn at him. His shoulder hurt, and his left arm felt numb.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Matt shouted, on his hands and knees on the sidewalk, eyes wide and wild with fear. “Who the fuck was that?!”

“No idea,” he admitted, rolling up to a sitting position. Just moving made it feel like some muscles tore in his chest, and his back felt damp from the pavement. Did he land in a puddle? That would figure.

“God,” Matt panted, sitting back on his haunches and putting his hand on his chest, like he was having a heart attack. “You saved my life.”

He put the gun back in his belt holster, hidden beneath his jacket. They could come back for a second pass, but he was fairly certain he‘d hit the gunman, or at least scared the fucking shit out of him. “No I didn’t. They were shooting at me.”

“What? Why? And how fast can you move? How’d you get your gun out that - oh shit.” Matt had suddenly stopped talking, looking horrified and staring at him.

“What?” He looked down at where he was staring just as Matt suddenly grabbed his trench coat and threw it open.

Okay, now it was easy to see why. He had a neat little hole in his shirt just above his left pectoral muscle, and pouring from it was an interesting amount of blood, which had already soaked through the left side of his shirt. No wonder he felt damp. Shouldn’t it hurt more? It just felt a bit bruised. The first time he was shot it hurt a lot more, but he was a younger then. Maybe age desensitized you in some fashion.

Matt exhaled like he’d been holding his breath, and said, “Okay, good, completely missed the heart. But the trajectory might’ve -”

He grabbed Matt’s hand as he reached for his shirt. “Get away from my blood. I’m infected.”

He stared at him, the shock still naked on his face. “Huh? You mean …”

“Yeah, I’m one of those kitty fuckers too.” He’d unconsciously grabbed his cell phone, and had already punched up 911. It was strangely automatic, almost like when he was a cop and you always reached for your radio. Same difference really. As soon as the 911 dispatcher picked up, he said, almost cheerfully, “Hi. There was just a shoot out on Brazil Street, and apparently I was shot in the process. The gunmen are gone, so don’t worry about sending out the tactical squad. I’m on the sidewalk in front of the teriyaki place.” The woman tried to get a word in edgewise, but he knew exactly the kind of information she needed, so she didn’t need to go through her script. “I’m Roan McKichan, a private detective - you might want to pass this on to the cops, as several of them will get a good laugh out of it. The wound’s not serious, I don’t feel that bad, but there’s a lot of blood, and I’m infected, so warn the EMTs coming in. The gunmen were in a dark green Jeep Grand Cherokee heading northwest down Elmore, and no, I didn’t get a plate, it was covered, and I have no idea who they were, except they didn’t like me very much. I may have hit one of them with return fire; I definitely hit the Jeep. I think that about covers it, so let the EMTs know they should check behind the Mustang that’s had the shit shot out of it.” As he cut the connection and dropped the phone back in his pocket, it occurred to him that what happened to the car would break Paris’s heart. He could probably fix it, but it would take a while, and glass was always a motherfucker to replace.

“How can you be so calm? You must have balls of steel,” Matt said, shucking off his coat, and before Roan could comment on that, Matt pulled off his own shirt. He quickly wadded it up and pressed it up against the bullet wound. He took a breath to say something, but Matt cut him off with, “I don’t have any open cuts on my hands, I’ll be fine. You need to keep pressure on it to slow the bleeding.”

There were so many things he wanted to ask, but he settled on, “How do you know so much about bullet wounds?”

“I don’t. I mean, I know about wounds in general. My mother’s a doctor over at County.” He grimaced sheepishly. “So as you might imagine, my coke habit was pretty embarrassing for her.”

“Teenage rebellion is embarrassing for everyone.”

He shrugged his naked shoulders, which were surprisingly bony, and now his skin was pimpling with gooseflesh since he was exposed to the cold drizzle. But now he could see the tattoo on his chest, the one that had been peeking up slightly beneath his collar. It was a spectacular Chinese phoenix design, a stylized bird with a swan neck and broadly spread wings, its tail almost dragon like, the feathers reproduced with such loving detail that they almost looked like they would be soft to the touch. It was a riot of color - red, blue, green, yellow, and black - and covered most of the center of his upper chest as it sprawled out in flight, its long, slender, feathered tail curving around his pierced left nipple.

“That’s gorgeous,” he blurted. It was; it was one of the most beautiful, detailed tattoos he’d ever seen.

Matt glanced down, as if he wasn’t sure what he was referring to, and again shrugged as Roan finally heard sirens screaming off in the distance. “I was really into body modification there for a while. This was the first part of a sequence of tattoos that was going to cover my entire torso like a shirt, y’know. But I found out that, once you’re sober, tattoos kinda hurt. Also, without downers, I didn’t have the patience to just lay there and get stuck by needles for hours on end.”

“I bet.”

Matt studied him closely for a moment, and said, “You’re a lion, aren’t you?”

This kid was just full of surprises, wasn’t he? “How do you know that?”

He smiled warmly at him, proud he guessed it right. “Like I said, you’re regal.”

“Lions aren’t regal. From what I understand, they’re lazy, sexist bastards.”

“You can’t believe everything you hear on Animal Planet, y’know.”

A very familiar ambulance screamed to a stop next to the curb one car removed from them, and it had barely stopped before the back doors of the rig burst open and a familiar EMT jumped down, holding a medical kit as big as a pro fisherman’s tackle box. “I just knew it was you,” Diego exclaimed, bustling over. “We hear about an infected who’s been shot in a firefight, and I said to Steve, “Holy shit, Ro has finally snapped.“” He was crouched down next to him before he even noticed Matt, and at Dee’s slightly stern look, Matt withdrew his shirt and backed away from them, giving Dee room to work. He ripped open his shirt for a better look at the wound, and scowled at it, like he could frighten the bullet out of his chest. “Oh man, what are we gonna do with you?”

“Buy me body armor?” He offered. Dee’s harsh glance suggested he didn’t find that funny.

The first cop car finally pulled up, and he asked Dee quietly, “Call Paris for me, would you?”

Dee’s expression softened as he nodded. “Of course.”

And he thought Paris was going to be heartbroken about the Mustang. Oy vey, he didn’t even want to imagine how he was going to react to this.

Roan rubbed his temples, closing his eyes as he thought. “No. What it does is explain why he hasn’t gone to the press about this. All he needs is someone to mention he knocked up one of the victims - a fact he conveniently never mentioned - and he’s under the police microscope. But come on, Par, you know Eli; he doesn’t do his own dirty work. He strikes me as the type of guy who’d faint if he got a paper cut.”

Paris sat near him on the sofa, turned to face him, one leg bent under him casually like he was on Oprah’s couch. “Yeah, but he has motive and people who will do anything for him. He’s a good suspect.”

“Yes, but he’d never have hired me if he was guilty. No matter what he thinks of me as a stinking faggot, he knows I’m good at my job. I doubt he’d give me the satisfaction of nailing him to the wall.”

“So why did he hire you?”

Roan leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling. It was a good question, but at least he thought he had an answer for it. “To clear his name before they can drag him through the mud; find a genuine suspect. Of course he doesn’t tell me this because he’s afraid I’d balk at helping him.”

Paris touched his hair, stroking it back from his temple, an almost unconscious affectionate gesture. Paris was a very touchy feely sort of guy, which Roan had had to get used to since he’d never really been. Now he almost liked it. “Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t be enough?”

“To save his ass from the fire? No.”

“As long as you’re not bitter.”

He gave him a sharp look, which just made Paris grin. Looking at him closely, though, he noticed a strain around his eyes, a tightness in his jaw. Was he still mad at him, or was it something else? “Got something on your mind?”

“Other than you being an asshole?” He replied, but with some humor. His grin faded as he sighed, considering whether to tell him or not, and ultimately decided to go ahead. “Actually, I got a weird phone call today.”

“Weird how?”

He propped his elbow up on the back of the sofa, resting his head on his hand, tilting his face at an angle best described as rakish. “Remember when I talked to that reporter about the Hatch case?”

“Yeah. Did he call back?”

“No. It just put my name in the article, and the article is apparently available online. My sister found it somehow, and she was able to use the online phone directory to find our number. She left me a message.”

“Oh?” He kept his tone casual, but he knew this was important. Paris had had no actual contact with his family since he was infected; he occasionally sent a postcard to let them know he was alive and okay, but never left a return address or told them where he was or what he was doing. They didn’t know of his infected status either, and Roan honestly had no idea why Paris kept his distance from them since he told him he got on well with his family. “Which sister?”

“Annie - Antigone. She wanted me to call her back.”

He stroked the left side of Paris’s jaw with his thumb, feeling rough but almost invisible stubble. Paris leaned into his touch. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I guess I don’t have a choice, do I? She knows where I am. And she’s pushy enough that if I don’t call back she’ll just show up on our doorstep one day.”

“So call her and let her know you’re all right. That’s probably all she wants to know.”

He scoffed. “You don’t know Annie. She’s a lawyer, and she’s pushy as hell. She’ll want to know why I’m here, why I’m working for you, and where I’ve been all these years. I’m not sure I want to tell her, and sadly, she knows when I’m lying. She’s immune to my charm.”

He wondered what the subtext was here. “Do they know you’re bisexual?”

Par licked his lips nervously and avoided his gaze. “I never exactly told them. If they asked around at college, they may have figured it out …”

“If it makes it easier, just forget me. Tell her we’re friends and leave it at that. I won’t be offended.” Yeah okay, so maybe this made him a hypocrite since he wasn’t crazy about people who decided to spend their entire lives in the closet, but he’d actually hoped Paris reconnected with his family before the tiger strain burned him out. Paris wouldn’t admit it, but Roan suspected that he missed his family, and if they had to lie about their relationship so he could be with them again, so be it. He was willing to take that hit for Par.

His eyes snapped back to his instantly. “What? No. I love you and I’m not ashamed of that. Besides, my family is a bunch of intellectual lefties; we had a cat named Che Guevara when I was a kid. I’m also pretty sure my Uncle Ben was gay, and no one cared.”

“You haven’t mentioned him.”

“Oh, he was a painter. He used to come to holiday gatherings with his “friend” Travis, who was a literary agent with a great love for Brook Brothers suits and Berlioz. They seemed like an odd pair since Ben was so free wheeling and Travis seemed so mainstream, and I couldn’t quite guess how they’d come to be such good friends or why. But in retrospect I can see it was just a case of opposites attracting.”

“Like us?”

Paris smiled at him. “Are we that opposite? I kinda think we’re a good fit.”

“And neither of us owns a Brooks Brothers suit.”

“A point in our favor.”

They were starting to digress from the point, though, and he could feel the low hum of attraction between them as Paris placed a hand flat against his chest. If they didn’t watch it, they’d be tearing each other’s clothes off within ten minutes, and while that was always a great deal of fun, he had to go meet Matt at Café D’Ante soon, and besides, he wanted to go out and see if he could go by Patrick Farley’s place beforehand, maybe run by Christa Hernandez’s place and see if he could talk to her Great Aunt. Maybe last night they could call an early end to the work shift, but there was no way he could justify it to himself two days in a row. Although part of him loved the idea of itemizing a bill for Eli and including notations for “Fucking”. “What are you afraid of?” He asked Paris, aware that this would probably short circuit this slow building, comfortable lust between them.

It did, quite rapidly. Paris let his hand drop away from his chest and broke eye contact, glancing at the stereo as if appealing to it for help. “You know what I’m afraid of, Ro.”

“Telling them you’re infected.” Par sighed heavily, which was an answer. “If they’re a bunch of intellectual lefties as you say they are, they’re not going to care.”

“I’ve disappointed them enough. I don’t want to disappoint them further. I mean, I know they’ll act cool about it, they’ll say they’ll support me, but I know it’ll break their hearts.” He grimaced and rubbed his face, and Roan suspected he was trying to hide the tears building up in his eyes. “I’ve done that enough. I’d rather just die suddenly and have them find out once I’m gone that I was infected. That way I wouldn’t have to pretend I didn’t notice how horrible I made them feel. That’s cowardly of me, isn’t it?”

“A bit.”

That made Paris look at him in surprise. Maybe he wasn’t expecting honesty. “Would fudging the truth have really killed you?”

“I have a reputation to uphold.”

Paris shook his head and rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’d be really pissed at you if I didn’t know you were right. No, wait, I’m pissed at you anyways.”

“I think I’ll take that as my cue to leave.” He slowly unfolded himself from the couch and stretched, some exhaustion from so much broken sleep making itself known in his tired limbs. If those forays late at night had proven anything to him, it was that he could make that disappear as soon as he started moving around.

Paris watched him with narrowed eyes, but if he was really angry at him, that vein on his neck would have stood out. He was more annoyed with him, which was bad enough. “Anything I can help with, or I am supposed to do some light filing and just sit here and look pretty?”

“I’d hope you’d call your sister. Really, I’m not doing anything thrilling, just seeing if people are home and willing to talk to me. I still have to make the connection between Eli and Cryer and Hernandez, which may be impossible.”

Paris’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Huh? I thought you said the Church wasn’t the connection between the four victims.”

“Right, the Church isn’t. But I have this feeling Eli is. He may be the cult leader, but he is separate from the Church. I bet the police didn’t even bother to break them apart.”

“Is this a gut feeling?”

“Kind of. But Eli goes out and has coffee; he goes out and eats.“ Ashley worked at a Starbucks, and Christa worked as a waitress at a trendy sushi restaurant called Kaisou, all within three miles of each other, and all within five miles of the Church. “They were his type, and I know for a fact that he’s been to Kaisou. He was fucking Melissa, and Patrick was a Church attender; if I can tie Eli at any point to Ashley and Christa -”

“You have the link between the victims,” Paris concluded, nodding at the logic of it all. “But, wait, doesn’t that make Eli a suspect again?”

“It could. Or it really could mean he is the next victim. Someone’s obliquely working their way down.”

“Oh shit. No wonder he was freaked out enough to hire you.”

“And yet he’s not freaked out enough to tell me the whole truth. Funny how that works.”

Paris suddenly smiled slyly, as if he’d just had a funny thought, and of course he felt compelled to share it. “A leopard doesn’t change his spots, Roan.”

“Oh god, that’s horrible. I’m calling the pun police on you.”

He raised his eyebrows suggestively, and lowered his voice to a seductive tone as he purred, “Shall I assume the position, Officer?”

Roan shook his head and snickered, waving to him as he walked to the foyer and grabbed his coat and hat off the hooks by the door. “Call your sister, man whore. I’d love to meet her sometime. I bet she has a ton of embarrassing stories about you as a kid.”

“Thank you for giving me another reason not to do it,” he replied cheerfully.

He actually hoped he did call, and he thought that, fears and sarcasm aside, Paris would eventually. If he cared for his family as much as he seemed to, he’d reach out to them, even if he did omit certain facts about his existence.

After all, life was short - and for some people, much shorter than seemed fair.

****

Christa’s Great Aunt lived in a quaint little clapboard house that could have been made of gingerbread and iced with lemon frosting, but no one was home save for one of those little yippie dogs that could only shake and pee, so after scaring it off to the other end of the house by growling at it through the door, he wrote a note asking her to please call him and arrange a good time for them to meet, as he wanted to talk to her about Christa. He left one of his business cards folded inside the note, and slipped it through the mail slot in the door.

He had a bit more luck at Patrick Farley’s apartment, as he encountered a neighbor who was willing to talk to him. His name was Juan, a young Hispanic man with long, shaggy black hair who smelled of cheap aftershave and cigarette smoke, who had Korn blasting on the stereo the whole time he was talking to him. He was the neighbor across from Patrick, and had talked with him several times, including lending him some quarters for the laundry room. He knew that Patrick went to the Church, but he didn’t know he was actually infected; he assumed he was a “wannabe”, although he didn’t look like one of those “Anne Rice lovin’ motherfuckers”. (Roan loved that description; he was going to have to use that sometime.) He was at work at the time of the shooting - Juan worked for a pest extermination service (which explained the aftershave; it wasn’t bad cologne but lingering traces of insecticide) - but he came home and found his body. He was digging out his apartment keys when he noticed Patrick’s door was slightly open, and he knew that wasn’t right, especially in a place like this. He knocked on the door and attempted to open it all the way, but something was blocking the door, and then he smelled “it” - presumably blood and shit, the pungent, awful smell of death. He saw blood on the floor and an outstretched hand, as well as a big mess that looked like “spilled lasagna” (presumably the remains of Patrick’s head). He called 911 and was careful not to touch anything else, because he figured a non-white guy finding a dead white guy might give the cops “ideas”.

He only knew Patrick in a casual sense, but he didn’t think he was a bad guy, and he hoped the cops find the pendejo who did this. He was actually shocked the cops hadn’t arrested anyone yet, as he figured they were extra speedy when the murder victim was an “all American white guy”, but maybe the fact that he was “one of them” (infected) made them drag their feet. Juan also said as far as he knew, no one disliked Patrick, he was pretty friendly and pretty quiet, and he couldn’t think of anything especially suspicious around here in the days leading up to the shooting. Roan left him his card on the off chance he remembered something, and he said he’d call if he anything occurred to him. Roan actually believed him.

The sad thing? Patrick had been dead forty minutes by the time Juan found him - meaning that if anyone else had seen the open door, they hadn’t checked; or if they had, they hadn’t called it in because they hadn’t wanted to get involved. Roan knew he was overly cynical at times, but the world seemed extra callous nowadays, with people too concerned about their own asses to risk involvement in anything that might get them in trouble. Juan was actually one of the good guys, but he probably didn’t know that.

The rain had let up to a dismal drizzle, although the sky was so dark it seemed like dusk when it was actually hours away. He found one of the last parking spots in the sprawling lot beside the Café D’Ante and went in, bracing himself.

The Café D’Ante was one of those places that tried so hard not to be pretentious they were actually pretentious, a casual but trendy place that just tried too damn hard to be something it both was and wasn’t at the same time that it was irritating. It had lots of windows to let in light (on any other day but today), potted plants to give the place an air of life, and lots of little round tables covered with tablecloths as white as snowdrifts. The hostess who greeted him far too eagerly was a perky young brunette who was probably a former cheerleader, and wore a black satin vest, which all the servers had on as their “causal” uniform. He told her he was meeting someone, and when he started to describe him, she said, “Oh, Matt.” So that’s why he picked this place - he was known.

She led him to a window table at the back, where Matt waited, looking frighteningly eager. He’d changed from his yellow t-shirt and walking shorts to designer black jeans and a pale blue muscle shirt that wasn’t quite as tight and showed off the other tattoos on his arms: he had a “bracelet” of black tribal marks encircling his right upper pectoral, and a dark red kanji on his left shoulder. It looked like there was a small red and blue mark peeking beneath the collar of his shirt, but he had no idea what that tattoo could have been.

Roan had never really liked blonds, his tastes had always run towards darker men (his last three boyfriends - Connor, Diego, and Paris - all had black hair, their one common denominator), but there was something appealingly open and attractive about Matt’s face, well scrubbed with solid bone structure, a firm jaw and sharp cheekbones, his eyes large and golden hazel. In about ten years he’d probably be really handsome. He wore a cologne he didn’t recognize, something woodsy and smoky, and beneath that was the scent of soap and shampoo. Had he gotten cleaned up extra nice for him? Oh no.

Matt’s face lit up in a bright smile. “I brought the key.”

“Great, thanks.” The waitress hovered near by, and he just ordered coffee. He was hungry, but he wasn’t eager to face pumpkin ravioli with vodka aioli, or whatever pretentious “fusion” food they served here.

Matt was Matt Skouris, a nineteen year old city native who grew up in the fairly tony suburb of Harmon Hills. He admitted sheepishly that he was a high school drop out who had only recently got his life back on track, which made Roan guess he had a drug problem. Matt won some points for admitting that as well, saying he’d been dropping ecstasy and hitting the amphetamines (speed and coke) pretty hard since he was fifteen and discovered the party circuit. He was eventually forced into rehab by his parents and had been totally clean for eight months, but it wasn’t always easy.

Matt had ordered an appetizer, some kind of bruschetta thing (small pieces of toasted bread with some tomato mixture on it) and it smelled good enough that his stomach rumbled nosily. Matt clearly heard it and offered him some, and he didn’t refuse. It was pretty good.

Matt also told him he wasn’t actually Ash’s best friend, and that she probably barely considered him a friend at all. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be, but Ash was very aloof and nervous, he supposed because of the way people treated her when they discovered she was infected. She gave him a copy of her apartment key after an incident in her building involving an “invasion” that left three people tied up in their apartment for a whole day. It was a drug related crime (of course; it was the Wildwood) but since she lived alone and far from her family, she liked the idea of having someone around who would be willing to check up on her if she suddenly didn’t show up one day. He felt a drive to be nice to her because she was infected, and he knew what it was like to be singled out and treated badly because you were different.

Matt was very animated. He used his hands when he talked, and talked almost a mile a minute, but that might have been due to his complementary lattes from work. He had clearly traded amphetamines for caffeine, and while surely his blood pressure was better for it, he still got a nice buzz.

While Roan was chewing on a bruschetta piece, Matt leaned over the table and seemed to study him intently. “Too bad you aren’t gay,” he said.

Roan almost choked on a tomato chunk. “Excuse me?”

Matt rested his elbows on the table and put his chin in his hands, just staring at him like he was the best looking dessert behind the glass counter. “You’re the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen in person.”

He glanced behind himself to make sure he was talking to him. “Huh? Me?”

“Yes silly, you. Oh my god, you’re not telling me you don’t know how attractive you are, are you?” Roan wasn’t sure how to answer that, and was going to steer the conversation back to Ashley, but Matt gasped dramatically and continued. “Oh holy shit, you don’t, do you? Will you marry me? I mean, right this second? I know a chick who’s like a Unitarian minister or some shit like that.”

“Um, Matt, why don’t we -”

But Mr. Caffeine kept on going. “How can you not know? You must look in the mirror to shave, unless you got electrolysis. I know this drag queen who had it done to his face, and he says it hurts a little bit but it’s totally worth it ‘cause you don’t need to shave for a long time. Even when you came in to the Starbucks today I noticed you right away; I even whispered to Shanaia to let me have you, since we tag team the front counter. You have the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen. Are they really that green? I was thinking contacts, but usually you can see contacts, y’know, if you stare hard enough you can make out the edge of the plastic. But I don’t see any edges. And your eyes kinda go down a little at the corners, not Asian, more really European, like the French, ‘cause a lot of French people have eyes like that. They’re like cat’s eyes, y’know, really striking. And they must be, ‘cause noticing a guy’s eyes is like eighteenth on my list, but on you I just saw them and that scar and that jaw of yours and I was like ‘Please god, let him be gay and into me’. You just look so … I guess rugged’s the word I want, but not exactly, y’know? Something like that. You just look strong and manly without being too butch or a muscle queen, you exude testosterone, but not in a caveman way, you’re like regal, and I just want to bury my hands in your hair. You don’t dye it, do you?”

Finally he paused, and Roan took a breath for him. Just listening to Matt made him feel like he was hyperventilating. “Umm, no, I don’t. And technically I am gay, but I have a boyfriend, so thanks for the interest. But no thanks. Can we get back to -”

Matt’s eyes widened so dramatically he wondered if the passing waiter had kicked him under the table. “You are gay? You’re fucking with me, aren’t you? You’re totally teasing.”

“No, I am. But I’m in a relationship, and this really isn’t relevant to the case. If I show you a picture of someone, can you tell me if they’ve been in the shop or not?”

“Oh sure. You’re honestly gay? Y’know, I have the best gaydar - I can’t believe I missed you. So tell me about this boyfriend of yours - is he cute? Please don’t tell me you’re one of those hotties who ends up with a guy who looks like a troll. ‘Cause I’ve seen that so often, and I don’t get it at all. I mean, who needs a sugar daddy that badly, y’know?”

If he said “like” or “y’know” once more, Roan was fairly certain he was going to punch him. No, no he couldn’t, he hadn’t given him Ashley’s key yet. With a sigh, he dug the picture of Eli out of his pocket, and said, “My boyfriend is the best looking guy I’ve ever seen. Now, can you tell me if this man is a regular at the Starbucks?”

Matt took the picture eagerly, but reared back slightly as soon as he saw it. “Don’t tell me this guy is your boyfriend.”

Roan rubbed his forehead. Motor-mouth Matt was starting to give him a headache. “No, that’s the man I was wondering if you’ve seen in the Starbucks.”

“Oh. Yeah, he’s in now and again. He’s no rabid regular, but he comes by at least weekly, usually Tuesday or Sunday.”

He stared at Matt somewhat skeptically. Could his memory be that good? “You know him that well?”

Matt nodded, handing the picture back. ”Venti espresso con panna half-caff with a shot of mocha syrup.”

Okay, now he wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or scared. “Do you know all your customers that well?”

“No, just the ones I like or hate. Isn’t that weird?”

“Which one is he?”

He clicked his tongue in disgust. “Hate, darling. He seems like a kinda skeevy bastard, y’know? And he never tips. I hear he’s famous, like some kinda local celebrity, but I dunno. He used to make eyes at Ash, but she never noticed and claimed I was making it up. But I wasn’t! I mean, I know what a guy looks like when he wants a piece of that, I’ve gotten it enough in my lifetime, and it doesn’t matter if they’re gay or straight, the look’s the same. Nobody knows a man like another man, y’know?”

Wasn’t that interesting? Eli had an attraction to Ashley that wasn’t reciprocal - and she died anyways. It could be coincidence; it could mean a hell of a lot. Unless Matt was mistaken like Ashley seemed to think … but he actually thought dramatic overstatement aside, Matt probably could nail lust in a man at fifty paces. He struck him as a “party guy”, the type who’d happily give you a blow job in the back of your car ten minutes after you met him. Not to be disparaging, but … okay, yeah, there was probably no way that couldn’t be disparaging. But if he just shut up for five minutes he might be an okay guy. “Was he in the Starbucks the Tuesday before she died?”

He shook his head, making his five consecutive earrings jingle. “No, he was in Sunday. Along with his regular espresso he bought a double chocolate muffin. I know, ’cause I served him; Ash was busy fighting with a jammed napkin dispenser.” Despite his appearance and his magpie chattering, Matt would have made one hell of a witness on the stand. Gossipy as all hell, he saw everything.

Sunday? Ashley was killed on Monday. Holy shit, there was no way in hell that was coincidence. But which way was this going?