Turncoat

TURNCOAT Copyright © 2011 by AMBER GREEN ISBN 978-0-9834834-0-3 This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed without written permission from the author except brief quotation in critical articles and reviews.

TURNCOAT AMBER GREEN

Chapter One

On the first Friday of August, I lay in Turn’s arms, held safe like some precious work of art. His snore, a subdued rumble, fanned my back same as it had every night of the two months since I’d moved in. The air conditioner in the south-facing window went from low speed to high. Sometimes that wakes me up, but this time I’d already been awake. Why? Dogs took to barking. Big dogs with booming voices. The sort of bark Turn would have if he were a dog, and if he bothered to bark before he tore off an intruder’s favorite limb. But Turn was here. The barkers would be Hayes and Curry, the friendly 4

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Rottweilers across the street—on the next street over, actually. Their bark went from a cheerful hey, there! to a menacing hey, you! in an instant. What made that pair angry? What had even caught their attention here in the dead zone of the night? I slid out from under Turn’s heavy arm and felt my way to the window. A box truck trolled the road: creep and stop and creep. Like it was delivering papers, or searching for an address. I watched it, still too sleepy to identify what was wrong. A bar of bright yellow light speared across the lawn. Old Miss Georgie, whose apartment took up most of the downstairs of this old house, had also come awake. The truck picked up speed and moved down the road. Miss Georgie complained how people would dump dead appliances here, knowing their trash wouldn’t be allowed to sully our Historically 5

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Significant lawns for long. She swore she would someday get photos of the miscreants. I guess we’d almost witnessed it, she and I. I squinted at the truck’s back-door design, but the street was too dark. Those trucks are common downtown, supplying the snack machines. Not so often in the middle of the night though, or in a residential district. “KT?” Turn had noticed my absence. I went to him, nestled my back against his slightly too-warm bulk. He snuggled in tighter, regardless of the heat, stroking from armpit to hip. Turn likes to pet me. Sometimes I feel like a six-foot cat, and I wish I knew how to purr. He brushed his fingers up to my waist, and back to rest again on my thigh. “Bad dreams?” “No.” Yes, I remembered bits of one, although it hadn’t been what awakened me. “Are you sure Father doesn’t know where we are?” 6

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“He might, by now. It doesn’t matter.” Turn’s calmness didn’t belittle my nightmare. He just wasn’t afraid. Turn’s an accountant, but big enough, tough enough, smart enough to hold his ground in any company. Being FBI didn’t hurt. I shivered, rolled onto my back, and pulled him to rest his weight on me, as if his muscled bulk could protect me from all the slings and arrows. “I can cut back the AC.” “It’s not the AC, Turn. Just hold me tight, okay?” He did. I wasn’t big or bad, and I wasn’t FBI. My police folder back home in Jacksonville probably has my shrink’s phone number with a box around it and arrows pointing toward it. They said I was at high risk for “suicide by cop.” So no, I didn’t have to be calm. I just had to get through one day and then another, knowing that with the crowd Father was reputed to be running with in Mexico, my chances of outliving him were 7

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rather high. He wasn’t my father, of course, but I’d grown up thinking he was, and calling him Mr. Turner wouldn’t lessen the confusion. Not with Turn, his actual bio-son, prodding my navel with something that had just gone from dick to cock. A big hand nudged between us to tug at my curlies. “As long as we’re awake?” Heigh ho. My skin went tight, and my own cock hardened. I reached for the array of lubes on the headboard. “Not so fast, KT. I’m gonna ride you slow and easy.” He said it teasingly, stroking my thighs with his fingernails and sprinkling a line of kisses along my jaw. He nipped lightly at my chin, at the end of the line of kisses. “Why are you in a hurry at this hour? I’m messing with your beauty sleep?” I felt half his teeth—the others pressed into skin deadened when the right side of my face was cut up. I don’t think he knows how far the numbness 8

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extends past the skin grafts. I don’t want to tell him, either. He’d somehow blame himself for not knowing. He handled me too delicately as it was, except when I ambushed him or got him so teased up he couldn’t think. I hesitated, my hand on a half-flattened tube, and squinted in a vain attempt to see his expression. Turn was the most laid-back lover I’d ever had. The most solid, the most caring. But I like balling hard enough to break furniture, and his constant fear of hurting me got in the way. “I’m not fragile.” Both hands paused on my hips. “Where did that come from?” Stop psychoanalyzing me! I bit my lip. Didn’t want to pick a fight. Didn’t want to explain, because he’d want to discuss it, and that would kill the mood. I’ve always been a little sensitive on the subject of mental stability. Even the least competent in my long string of shrinks agreed I had an enhanced fight or flight response. But in other respects, I wasn’t as 9

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fragile as Turn seemed to think. Am I? Being afraid of a slow-moving truck was not exactly normal, was it? The dumper wannabes had only drawn the attention of an insomniac old lady, the world’s jolliest Rottweilers, and me. And perhaps had scared only me. I didn’t want to analyze myself any more. It’s worse when I try to remember all the details that would make up a pattern to analyze. I wanted Turn to drive out the doubts. Now. “I just am in a hurry, Turn.” He took the tube from my hand without a word. I draped a leg over his shoulder, giving him an open angle. He’s very nearly my height, but my height is all leg, and his isn’t. We can ball with me on my back or with me flat on my belly, had wrecked an unexpectedly flimsy recliner, and had ordered a couple of interesting extensions for his exercise 10

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machine, but doggie—his favorite position—wouldn’t do it. Either I’d have to keep my knees spread so far I’d limp all day, or he’d have to squat behind me instead of kneel—which meant he’d be fighting off a charley horse after a while. We’d found out that cramps and climaxes don’t mix. Not for us, at least. I’ve taken up yoga. Turn didn’t know...yet. The lube was cool at first touch, but warmed as he spread it. I reached up to cup his face, and found his brows furrowed. He was frowning. “What woke you up, KT? The dogs barking?” “I think it was one of those unauthorized appliance delivery trucks Miss Georgie is always complaining about. She scared it off.” “Right.” His fingertip massaged its way inward. I closed my eyes. Couldn’t see anyway, and closing them made my brain stop trying. Let me focus that much more fully on Turn’s style of digital sorcery. He withdrew his fingers, and wrapped his fist 11

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around my cock. “Don’t sing this time.” While I laughed, he pushed in, shoving my breath out of my lungs. My laugh ended in a groan. Yeah. He paused, adjusted his angle, and pumped my cock languidly. “Is it good?” “Take a hint, Turn. If it wasn’t, the gauge in your hand would say so.” I felt his laugh through his cock, and straight into my belly. I wished I could see his face. “Why is it so dark?” He pumped deeply, in and out, keeping a double stroke on my cock with one hand while holding my knee with another. Okay, that was the rule for the night. I put a fist against the headboard for leverage, and met his next thrust with my own. Stars sparkled across my vision. That hit the right spot! “Shh...” Turn whispered, and laughed again. Softly. While ramming another spray of sparks across my vision. “You don’t want the old lady 12

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downstairs to hear. She might call the law to come rescue you.” “Or you,” I gasped. I might be a threat, even to a big bad FBI man. It wasn’t impossible. “Right. I’ve lived here three years and you’re the one she bakes pies for, but she’d send the cops to rescue me.” His thrusts came harder, his fist-strokes on my cock slightly erratic Why can’t I see you? Where’s the street light? Oh... “Street light’s out.” “I’ll—have it—replaced.” He was breathless. I grinned in the dark. You’d think this was work or something. I gathered my own breath, timed it. “Come—daylight?” He made a strangling noise, then pounded a chuckle deep into me. “If you want me to lose my rhythm, you’ll need—better jokes—than that.” “I must not—” I didn’t want anything, except what was coming. The tidal wave. Gathering force. 13

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Rising from the deep. Surging deeper, higher with every cycle, and... “Turrr—” He clapped a hand over my mouth, and then clacked his own teeth against the seizure that caught us, bound us, mine triggering his, his amplifying mine. Nowwww! Finally, he fell over sideways, my leg draped over his flank. “You bit hell out of me, KT.” I breathed a while. He didn’t sound mad. More pleased with himself, to tell the truth. “Your fault.” He chuckled again, and pulled me closer, cuddling me to his sweaty, hairy, cum-spattered bulk. “My fault.” The AC chilled my back, and I didn’t care. I rolled over to sprawl on top of Turn, and let his breathing raise and lower me. His heartbeat thundered through my chest and head, just like mine. Overhead, small animals galloped a circuit of the attic: bdddrp, bdddrp, bdddrp, squeeee! squeee! “What is that, squirrels fighting?” 14

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“No.” Turn’s hand brushed down my ass and leg, petting me again. “Rats screwing. All old houses have them. New ones probably do too, but new houses have insulation to muffle their footfalls. We have just a thin layer of lath and two hundred sixty years’ worth of built-up paint. Ignore them. Or consider them a lullaby.” “Now that’s kinky.” “If you say so.” He yawned, his voice already distant and sleepy. I dozed. When I woke again, somewhat late for my dawn stretching exercises, he’d left for work. ··· Until I moved to Savannah, I never realized a place could be more miserably hot and muggy than Florida. Turn said these Colonial-era houses didn’t need AC. He didn’t spend time at home during the day. On the weekends we’d hike or canoe through the inland waters, or occasionally hit the beach. But 15

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I didn’t have a job to escape to on the weekdays, so I’d bummed money off Turn to buy a bright-red AC unit for the south window. In the late afternoon, I lay naked on the bed, wet from my shower, with both the AC and a fan directed at me, and stared at the ceiling. The plaster had come off here and there, leaving white-washed wooden lathwork. The rest of the plaster was probably glued in place by the two and a half centuries of paint he’d mentioned. Sometime back in the nineteen forties, the house had been divided into three apartments. We had the smallest: a kitchen and sitting room downstairs (each room with its own porch and door) and two sauna-like rooms upstairs. Some genius had placed the normalsized bedroom right above Miss Georgie’s sitting room, and our bathroom right above her kitchen. Turn’s second “bedroom” was smaller than a kingsized mattress, but I guess having a “two-bedroom apartment” shielded his reputation. 16

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The stump of my pinky finger itched. It did that a lot these days, especially when I was working hard not to think of the mess I’d left back in Jacksonville. Working hard not to wonder how long Father would wait before he came after us. After Turn for betraying him to the FBI. After me for showing them where to find the bodies. My dissertation hadn’t advanced by a single word today. Instead I’d spent the morning and half the afternoon doggedly crawling through a couple of museum-worthy gardens, weeding, putting the edible weeds (including a few pinches of parsley) in one basket and the junk in another. I carried a note mendaciously certifying I was not a plantpoacher, but so far the challenges had been limited to a friendly question or three. The salad-worthy greens sat crisping in the fridge, which was too small for me to crawl into. My stir-fry ingredients lay lined up on the counter. Turn hadn’t shown up for dinner. 17

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Living with an FBI man means getting used to being stood up. I’d only moved in with him at the end of the spring semester, though, and wasn’t inured to the painful application of that rule. The phone rang. I summoned the energy to look over at it, but didn’t reach for it. Turn’s calls were all sales people. Anyone who knew him called his cell phone. Me, I was hiding from the mailman and I hated to hear the telephone. Neither my brother nor my sister ever called. I didn’t know if they’d written me off as a traitor to the family, or if their lawyers had advised against talking to me. I got bill collectors, who couldn’t believe I—a Turner!—had no job, no money, no assets. I got investigators, who wanted me to say more than I knew about the sordid details of the Turner family’s businesses. I got Mother’s lawyers, who wanted me to shut the fuck up and wouldn’t believe I had. Mother herself called 18

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monthly; she spoke stiffly and never actually said anything. The press called in waves, like attacks of middle-school bullies. I’d let my own phone expire rather than pay for the minutes they used, yakking into my voice mail box. Turn had bought me an anonymous pre-paid cell phone. I pulled on a clean pair of running shorts, joggling my tender bits into the support lining. They say a man can’t outrun every trouble, but sometimes it almost felt like it. By the time I’d run enough, though, poorly supported yarbles would be sore enough to have me walking like Barnacle Bill. The machine finally picked up. “¿Qué honda?” I checked the machine. Area code 520. That same number had called right as I’d come in, stripping off my sweaty clothes on the way up the stairs, but had ended without leaving a message. ¿Qué honda? wouldn’t be a sales call. Too slangy. 19

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Less hello than wassup? The voice went on in slurred Spanish, telling Turner and Corazon to come visit him. He had something for them. He didn’t trust the police. The voice was all wrong, a slushy whisper with an odd blend of formal language and earthy terms I’d learned by listening in on Mother’s yard-workers. I debated picking up the phone and asking if this was Racien, Race, the guy whose picture Turn carried in his wallet. Corazon, or Cori, was Race’s sister. I’d met her. She was excruciatingly polite, a forensic accountant like Turn. Only she worked for a private firm, making about three times what the feds paid Turn. I didn’t think Race knew about me. He’d been gone for quite a while. I knew Racien was a cop— not FBI—who was working deep undercover on some part of the investigation that had, last fall, led Turn to pretend he was a prodigal returning to the stone bosom of the Turner Family. But everything 20

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else I knew about him—basically that he was in the Mountain time zone, three hours behind us, and in an area that didn’t use daylight savings time—I’d found out by hacking Turn’s email. Not that I’m a snoop. I just had to know, and Turn wouldn’t tell me. I left his mail alone once I was sure that uncovering more information would take more digging and extrapolating than I could justify, even to myself. If the caller was Race, and was as drunk as he sounded, any conversation would get ugly. The discreet course of action would be to let him leave his message and alert Turn to retrieve it. Why was he calling the house line instead of Turn’s cell? Had he gone undercover before Turn got that cell number? Instead of drunk, was he sick? Injured? I can’t trust the cops didn’t sound like what a cop would say. Was it code, considering he was undercover? Was he hiding somewhere, hurt? 21

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Scared of the wrong person overhearing whatever he said? I picked up the phone. “Race?” The line cut off. Well, fuck. I pulled on a nauseatingly bright plaid seersucker shirt. Turn swore wearing it would help keep me from getting heat rash. My theory was he got it for me to wear running, on the theory something that bright should reduce my chances of getting creamed by some motorist who’d swear I never saw him! Something was very wrong in area code 520. And Turn should have been home by now. I called his cell. He answered guardedly. “Hello?” I think I just busted you to your long-absent lover. What a primo conversational gambit! Especially when Turn didn’t sound like he was free to talk. “Um...Are you going to be much longer? Or should I put supper away?” “Shit. I’m sorry, KT.” 22

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What are the most useless words in the English language, Kenny? I blinked. Father had taught me a gut-level aversion to I’m sorry. But Turn used the words casually, like normal people did. “I’ve already eaten,” he was saying. “I won’t be home until way late.” I heard the clink of china and silverware. He was having supper now, and not at a scab-on-a-bun. So much for my stir fry and salad. News about Race would be particularly welcome now, I bet. “You got a call just now. I think it was your... Race. He left a message. Said for you and Corazon to come visit him. Said other stuff.” Turn’s voice sharpened. “Said Corazon, not Cori?” “Corazon. He was slurring big-time, but I couldn’t have mistaken Cori for Corazon.” The background noise stopped abruptly. He’d hit his mute button. Shut me out. 23

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My face heated. “Are you going to tell me what’s up?” The background noise clicked back on. “Later. When I can tell you in person.” Mute again. He had a one-way mute, so he could listen to me while hiding his end from me. Grownups are talking, Kenny. Go watch TV, why don’t you? Was I stupid to think Turn offering to share his apartment meant he wanted me to share his life? Was it time to ask the questions that I might not like the answers to? “Do I need to find another place to stay, Turn?” Click. “No! No, KT. Stay put. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t leave the house. Wait for me to get back to you. Please. I have stuff going on right now, and I don’t need to be worried about you too. Please?” I’m a sucker for the word please. When Turn says it, at least. And he knows it. “Later, dude.” I hung up on him, and rolled over, staring at the ceiling again. I’d been happy, these past months. 24

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Even with shit splashing up from Florida, I’d been happy. Because finally I had Turn smiling at me, with no distance in his eyes. Turn to wake up to, whether I’d had a nightmare or not. I don’t like sleeping alone. Don’t want to wake up with no one beside me, with no Turn-dent in the pillow and Turn-scent in the sheets. Don’t want to be the one who gets left behind when Race returned. The disposable timefiller. The doorbell rang. Fuck’em. I had a good sulk going. I don’t indulge often, and I deserve a thorough-going, eyeballsdeep, long-lasting one when I do. Doorbell rang again. Fuck’em with scrub-brushes. Boom! The old house shook. Directly below me, Miss Georgie shrieked. I rolled out of bed, instinctively grabbing my shoes. Things crashed and shattered downstairs. Shit! Old ladies are so fragile. 25

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“You scum! What are you doing! Get out of there! I’ll sic the feds on you! I happen to know an FBI man! Habbala English? Get out!” She couldn’t be hurt, or in serious danger, if she was being allowed to yammer that much. I scrambled into the closet, onto the top shelf up there. Something inside a box broke under my knee. I tossed it among the others on the far side of the shelf. I mashed myself into my corner, on top of a stack of blankets, then wriggled partly behind them and dragged Turn’s winter coat up over me. I belatedly thought to grab the top edge of the closet door and pull it as far closed as I could. Feet pounded up the stairs, and rushed into the room. I let go the door and cringed in my corner, listening. My head scraped the ceiling, and dust from the attic sifted down. I thumbed the nerve in my top lip to keep from sneezing. 26

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“¡Ni pedo!” “¡Chingada madre!” Okay, it wasn’t the Mormons come to save my soul. They overturned the bed with groaning springs and heavy thumps. They turned over something that clattered and jangled, wood and light metal—I’d guess the dresser. From a distance—downstairs—I heard even more crashing. The closet door was yanked open, so it bounced off the wall and slammed itself shut. At least two guys upstairs. At least one more tearing up the downstairs. If balance was an important thing for an attack squad, there’d be two downstairs. Maybe three. I eased my feet into the shoes, and knotted the laces tight. If worst came to worst, I could roll over and kick a hole in the ceiling. Find a way out through the attic. But then they’d know where I was. 27

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Who were they? Were they looking for Turn? Or me? I huddled, sweating, under Turn’s coat and I tried to pick up what they were saying. Something about power cords. They found my mini ‘puter, my cell phone. I kept both encrypted. Turn had his stuff with him. They hadn’t mentioned my wallet, but it was on the end table by my phone. If they’d found the phone and its charger, how could they miss the wallet? Someone pounded the wall, snarling. If I catch this pendejo, I will fuck him so deep he’ll scrub my dick when he brushes his teeth! I saw prickles of light, and realized I hadn’t breathed in a while. I forced a silent, slow breath over a count of ten, trying to inhale Turn’s calm courage from the scent of his coat. Stupid as that idea might be, it was what I had. I held my breath for a count of five, and slowly let it go. Sirens approached. Cops. I rested my head against the wall. Who’d ever 28

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think I’d be grateful to know the cops were close and closing in? The men outside my closet held a hurried, whispered conference. Then they galloped down the stairs. I inhaled. Exhaled. And stayed where I was. What if they hadn’t gone far? What if they were right outside, waiting for someone to feel safe enough to come out of hiding? Why had men like that come here? Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Think, Ken. Think! Was this somebody coming after me, because of the mess in Florida? Or after Turn, the FBI guy who really did know too much? Could they be after Racien? He hadn’t been here in months. Where’s Area Code 520? Not Savannah. No place in Florida, as far as I knew. These guys didn’t have the Cuban intonation I’d 29

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learned in school in Jacksonville. Mexicans? I didn’t know enough Spanish to do more than guess. Except they weren’t Cuban. Or lisping Euros. Mexican loomed as the obvious choice, if only because Father was in Mexico. He’d fled the house an hour ahead of the federal marshals. I didn’t know enough to testify against him. But Turn did. This past autumn, Turn had lived in Father’s house as an adult son, Father’s golden child even if he was a bastard, gathering evidence about... I didn’t really even know what about. If there’s a sensible part of me, it’s probably the part that doesn’t want to know. Feet pounded up the stairs. “Ransacked up here, too!” “Cover me while I check the closet!” Peace, dudes. I’m not a burglar. You believe me, don’t you? “I have you covered!” Translation: Shoot on sight. Or, worse, they’d drag me to jail until Turn came to identify me and get 30

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me out. My mouth dried and my throat tightened. I couldn’t go to jail. Not again. “Hold up! The dogs are here!” Outtahere! I rolled, slammed both heels through the ceiling, and clawed my way through the hole without stopping to breathe. Not much worth breathing up here anyway. I ran along the joists, ducking roof beams, to the north side of the house. To the big vent and the pecan tree outside it. Heat and dust and spider webs dragged at me. Echoing shouts and panic drove me on. I took out the aged slats of the vent with my shoulder, and plunged into the resinous, brilliant green beyond. And fell. I scrabbled for a handhold. Locked onto a wristthick branch. Jerked to a stop. Oww! I shook my head, trying to see, but sweat and the muggy air had settled the dust and cobwebs, had made a gray paste of a mask. Only smears of color got through. I’ve got to get away. 31

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“Here’s one of ‘em! Hey, you! Don’t move!” Outtahere. I dropped to the ground, scrambled to my feet, and ran. Shouts behind me blanked my mind of everything but get away! Away! I ran, and ran, and ran.

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Chapter Two

By the time I was capable of looking back, nobody was chasing me. I collapsed to a bench by a big fountain, and wheezed a while. The fountain was that famous one, whatever they called it, with lots of ironwork and a ten or twelve-foot thing in the middle, spilling down over a couple of basins into a pool the size of a small house. I had no idea how long I’d been running. When my chest felt less like exploding, I heaved myself to my feet and went to the fountain, and plunged my arms into the cool, sweet water. The wind shifted and blew a deliciously chilled spray 28

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over me. I ducked my head in the pool and scrubbed twigs and crap out of my hair. The fresh water on my scalp and neck felt terrific. It also stung. I’d collected scratches through my hair and up one forearm. My throat felt like it was scabbed with dust. Didn’t want to drink that water, though. Had to be a drinking fountain around—yes, there. I stood in line behind a pair of identical twins some sadist had sent out in public wearing matching plaid seersucker shorty overalls with matching tennis shoes. Once they moved, I sucked down long draughts of the tepid water. They lined up behind me, too, so I got out of their way as they’d gotten out of mine. The twin on the left sneered at me. Only then did I realize their plaid matched mine. They thought I’d voluntarily come out in public wearing something that would make a golfer flinch. To the north, church bells rang. Eight o’clock. I’d started running a little before six-thirty. No wonder 29

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I felt so wobbly and weak. Marathons were a winter sport for me; I wasn’t used to extended exertion in the heat of summer. Salt and sugar. I needed to replenish my bodily stores of both. Then I could go back to Turn’s house, where Turn was no doubt seething, wondering where I’d run off to this time and how much work it would be to find me. When I was a kid, everyone knew to send Turn to find me when I disappeared, because I’d stay hidden from anyone else. I remember the time I set up a bug in my shrink’s office to listen in on an appointment with my par—with Mother and her husband. Kendall has an enhanced fight-or-flight response, Mr. Turner. Your anger is not an effective way to make him feel safe enough to want to come home. I don’t care whether he wants to come home. It wasn’t us that checked him in this time and we shouldn’t have to pay for it. Give the brat some pills that will fix him, and get his pansy ass out of this 30

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thousand-dollar-a-day facility or I’ll beat him bad enough to break every third bone in his body. Sir, I’m quite aware you wouldn’t actually hit him. However, I’m afraid Kendall thinks you capable of literally anything. Even when he told the simple truth, Father could fool anyone. Except me. And Turn. Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. I fished a few bucks’ worth of quarters and dimes out of the fountain. If Turn wasn’t home, I needed to wait until he was. He needed to be the one who talked to the police. I don’t deal well with the police. They don’t believe me no matter what I tell them. Exhale two three four... Heigh ho, ice cream! I counted out enough wet coins for a vanilla cone and a steaming bag of boiled peanuts. I wolfed down the melting-soft ice cream first. Opening the peanuts, I reluctantly settled my mind 31

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back down to The Situation. I’d given Turn something to worry about, but not necessarily an immediate crisis. So “way late” might still be his plan. He’d asked surprisingly few questions about the maybe-Race call, though. Shouldn’t that indicate he expected to come home soon to get the rest of the available information? Or could it mean he was working on something he cared about more than a call from Race? I ruthlessly crushed the spurt of hope. When all was said and done, Race and Turn were a longterm couple. Turn and I were... I don’t know. I was the other guy in this relationship. Turn had never promised me more than “right now.” I’d moved in as casually as I might move in to a student flophouse. Miss Georgie, our de facto housemother, had introduced herself my first week. She’d assured me that in her day, young men often shared accommodations without everyone and his nosy cousin thinking any kind of funny stuff was going 32

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on. Meaning she did think some kind of funny stuff was going on. But she seemed to like me anyway. The Situation. Concentrate. Is Turn home yet? Would the cops have contacted him immediately? More likely, wouldn’t they wait for him to come home? Their contact number would be the house phone (big help that would be) or his cell, or his office number. At six-thirty, the office would have been closed. The cops would probably have expected him to be out to dinner or on his way home. No matter which way I twisted or turned the puzzle pieces, they came down to black or white. Either he was home, dealing with the cops and the mess and making phone calls and maybe worrying about me, or he wasn’t home and was happily but dangerously ignorant. If I had a phone, I could call him. The strike team had my phone. I made a balloon of my peanut bag and exploded it with one punch. 33

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A pair of women in pink shorts and flamingodecorated wide-brimmed hats stared at me. They’d probably been waiting for me to pull a crazy-man act and give them an excuse to call the cops. I have an outlaw’s face. I went through the muscles, mechanically relaxing them. In the opposite direction, a young couple, Indian or Pakistani or something, watched a laughing toddler throw peanuts at the squirrels. The woman wore hanky-cloth in dark reds and gold draped over her hair, while the man lounged with his dress shirt half-open and a tie trailing from his pocket, a picture of contentment. I approached them, but not close enough to be considered threatening or rude about it. Even so, the woman grabbed her kid by the shorts and eyed me warily. I addressed the guy, enunciating as best I could without being offensive. “Excuse me, could you please call my home for me and tell them I am on my way?” 34

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“Certainly.” The young man pulled his cell. “The number?” Excellent English. If he could remember to say thuh instead of thee...shit. I didn’t know what other language he spoke, and probably couldn’t even say hello in it. I sat on the edge of the pool, making myself shorter and less threatening, keeping him between me and his family, and gave him Turn’s cell number. “Tell him it’s Ken, please, and I’ll be home in twenty minutes or so.” He nodded, then after a moment frowned. “I believe I am getting the voice mail. Should I leave the message?” “Yes, thank you.” If Turn was primarily concerned about me, sitting home waiting for me, he would answer the phone. So if he let it ring unanswered, he could be oblivious of the mess at home or he could be eyebrows-deep in it. I wasn’t going to find out anything without 35

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going home. ··· The police were still at the house as I approached: two marked cars and one unmarked car. I heard Turn’s voice, and had to stop and convince myself it was really him. He was okay. He stood in the yard with his white dress shirt catching the last blue light of evening, surrounded by the darkly dressed police. He sounded calm. If he could be calm, I could. But I couldn’t make myself approach him with all those cops there. Couldn’t. No more than I could have reached into a bucket knowing a cottonmouth was in it. A pissed-off cottonmouth. I stepped between a pair of overgrown camellias to wait for the cops to leave. Shadows thickened around me in the twilight. I ignored the buzzing mosquitoes, even the one that bit the corner of my eyebrow, rather than slap them and risk the 36

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movement catching someone’s eye. Eventually, the uniformed cops shook Turn’s hand and left. The non-uniformed guy stood in the yard, a two-handed, two-phone talker. Built long and lean, he looked like Turn’s boss, Ron Sweet, but he paced incessantly. Sweet doesn’t pace. Someone turned on a light inside, in old Miss Georgie’s sitting room. The cop threw the window a look and stepped pointedly out of the yellow streak of light. That’s a mighty bright light you have, Miss Georgie. Why did it look so bright? The closest three street lights were out. Not just one. Three. Was this something new? How was I supposed to know? I had slept through my pre-dawn run, and yesterday morning I’d not set out until dawn, when the lighting didn’t matter. Lights aren’t something I’m usually interested in. 37

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But now the darkness spreading out of every nook and corner felt sinister. I barely could see the boards nailed over the destroyed door, or Turn’s coat and tie, which lay draped across the porch swing. His cell phone rang from the porch, likely in his coat pocket. At the same time, the plainclothes cop spoke to him. He looked at the porch, but spoke to the man standing there, then escorted him to his car. The cop drove off. The phone rang again. Turn pivoted and strode toward it. At the third ring, he lunged forward. I wanted to call out to him. Couldn’t. Wait until he gets off the phone, Ken, then walk up to the porch like a civilized person. Right as Turn grabbed his phone, a box van pulled up between us and parked, the last foot of its box blocking my view. It reeked of paint. A delivery guy got out with a cardboard box and an electronic clipboard, and walked to my right, around the front of the van. His white sneakers glowed in the 38

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headlights. Those white sneakers didn’t fit with the brown uniform. The short sleeves bunched at the bend in his elbows, and the short pants covered his knees completely. Not his uniform. And why had he been riding on the passenger side? The back door of the van rolled up, and two guys slipped out of it, going to my left at a casual pace, but... not casual. Stiff-legged, shoulders slightly hunched. I crept up to the end of the van. The engine was still running. I saw miscellaneous boxes, and a pile of backpacks. The driver whistled tunelessly. I kept out of his sight. One pack had power cords looping messily out of the side pocket. Operating on instincts I didn’t pause to question, I crawled in, like the rat my brother liked to call me, and eased that pack out of the pile. Silently, I slid out again, ears tuned to the driver’s monotonous whistle. 39

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The three others would be closing in on Turn now. I’d seen him take down two attackers in the dojo, but these guys weren’t likely to follow the rules. And there were three of them. The guy with the box hefted the electronic signature thing at Turn, practically nudging him. Turn waved one hand, asking him to wait. The two men from the back broke a jog, angling in at Turn. I yelled, “It’s a trap!” Turn spun, lashing out with his free arm, and the bogus delivery guy went down. The van’s engine revved. The driver swore, and changed gears. He knew I was here. He was wrestling his bulk out of the seat harness. “KT!” Turn’s voice. Worrying about me? He had his own fight to take care of! I ran for him, slinging the pack onto my shoulders as I went. A shot cracked. Anemic—a .22 with a subsonic 40

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load—echoing from inside the van. Something slapped into the backpack. I staggered, but focused on sweeping a leg behind a guy’s knee, dropping him. The uniformed one Turn had dropped came up off the lawn at me. I kicked his face. Hard. He went back down. Blood spattered my shoe and ankle. Turn yelled, a trumpeting blast of sound, and fell in a heap. A dart made a black mark on the side of his neck. A threadlike wire attached to it gleamed against his neck and then vanished in the dusk. Stun gun. There had to be a second wire. If I could break one of them lose, he’d recover fast. I lunged for the wire I could see. A fist came at me. I evaded, moved in behind the fist, and aimed a punch under his chin. A hand knocked my fist aside, and another fist came in from the corner of my eye. 41

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I ducked, blocked a coordinating blow from the other side, and scrambled back for more room. I had the reach on these guys. They had the advantage close in. Why wasn’t I thinking about reinforcements? “9-1-1” I screamed. “Miss Georgie! Call 9-1-1!” The Rottweilers’ booming voices echoed off the face of the house. Turn groaned, and came up on all fours, started to rise. Electricity crackled again, smelling of burned wires. He collapsed. I deflected another punch, and a brilliant light flashed. I staggered, feeling absurdly like a teddy bear, and sat down. The men picked up Turn and their fallen guy and shuffled to the delivery van with them. I watched stupidly. My head felt heavy, and my heartbeat thudded in it. 42

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They threw Turn, floppy as a giant’s rag-doll, into the back of the van. I wanted to say something. But what? My shit was fucked up. I didn’t have any balance. Didn’t have strength to move. I had to move. Had to stop them from taking Turn. The van drove off. Taking Turn. I sat drooling in the grass, while they took Turn. Sirens...Cops... No, no. Not cops. I couldn’t deal with cops when I knew what was going on, much less when I knew jack shit. I had to get away from the blood, away from the cops. I crawled into the shadow between the camellias, pulled myself hand over hand to stand up, then to drag along a cedar privacy fence. Somehow managed to climb that yard’s back fence. In the next yard, a wall of slopping wet tongues met me, Hayes and Curry. 43

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That was far enough. I staggered into a potting shed. I found a space behind a stack of cold frames, and surrendered to the darkness. ··· Light blinded me. I curled up with my hands over my eyes. My head hurt. The smell of blood lingered sickeningly. “Hey, son—take it easy!” The light lessened. I didn’t know the voice, but I knew the tone, and relaxed. I looked from under my hands at a rangy man dressed in pale, loose slacks and a button-up pale shirt. I’d seen him somewhere. He didn’t alarm me. The intensity of my headache did. I’d been running. From? Dogs? No...the Mexicans. “Are you nauseated?” I sat up. It hurt worse, but I wasn’t nauseous. “No. I’m Ken Turner.” 44

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“Yes, of course. You’re staying with Turner Scott. You weeded my aunt’s memorial garden last week. You took some of the orange mint too, but not enough to worry about.” Orange mint... Yes, Miss Georgie had been craving it. Obviously, I hadn’t been as stealthy as I thought. I’d also taken some chard and some really good flat-leaf parsley. I stretched tentatively. Hayes was slurping at my collar and the back of my head. “The Elstrom garden?” “Of course. I’m Elstrom.” He pushed Curry aside and tipped the flashlight so the reflected light in my face was brighter, though not full force. Then he turned it off. “Are you in trouble, son?” No, I just hid in your potting shed and passed out here because the Marriott was full! I fingered the back of my head, getting thoroughly dog-slobbered in the process, and found a sore lump with a sticky raw spot in the middle of it. “I did something to the back 45

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of my head.” “Let me see.” I leaned forward, leaning on the back of one of the dogs. Elstrom ‘looked’ with his fingers, gently spreading my hair and pressing here and there. It hurt. “You have an egg under your scalp, but the skull doesn’t feel mushy or anything. Are you fool enough to go to the hospital over a little bit of a bump on the noggin?” “No!” The old guy raised his bushy eyebrows. “Pardon me for raising my voice, Mr. Elstrom. I don’t go to the hospital for anything if I can help it.” “Good for you. Those places carry diseases you don’t catch nowhere else, and most of them are not curable. Besides, Georgie said it was just like an oldfashioned alley fight out there. She just never figured young Scott would be in on that kind of fun. Or you, for that matter. Tell the truth, she was getting the impression y’all were a little sweet.” Sweet! Turn’s supervisor. The one cop-a-zoid 46

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(other than Turn) I could talk to without getting nauseated, tongue-tied, and strung out on my own ‘tude. The one single cop in the world who might believe me if I said the sun rose in the east. The rotties went tense, and then launched their savage junkyard-dog act. Their yammering bark rang in my ears. They muscled the old man aside in their rush to get out of the shed. “Yo, Sarge! Dogs!” Fuck. The cops. “Go around,” someone called out. “C’mon, son,” the old man whispered, and helped me up. We slipped out of the shed and to the shadow of a lush, velvet-leafed clump of Mexican sunflower, then to a kiwi arbor, then to his back porch. And all that time, the cops were beating the bushes in the yard next door, probably blinded by their own swinging flashlights, deafened by the dog’s screams of mock rage. One of the cops swore at them, and another pulled his pistol, though his 47

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sergeant spoke sharply to him. I love it when people who don’t like me meet up with dogs who do. The old man waited until a cop scraped something noisy, then opened the screen door and shooed me in first. The paint flaked on the door beyond it, but it opened and shut without a groan. Inside, he waved me to sit at his kitchen table. I took a seat gratefully. I’ve had worse headaches, but not many. What idiot ever thought celadon green and lime green were kitchen colors, much less that they went together? The smell of a fried cheese sandwich lingered. My stomach clenched in need, or warning. Maybe both. Elstrom opened a breadbox and pulled out a game board and a Crown Royal bag full of little rattling things. “You’ve been here since right after supper, of course. We’ve been playing Scrabble.” “Don’t volunteer that I’m a Turner, please?” I hurriedly opened the board, spilled the letter tiles 48

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beside it, and started arranging what might look like a nearly finished, hard-fought game. The barking redoubled. Showtime. On cue, hammering hit his front door. “Mr. Elstrom! Mr. Elstrom, are you all right in there?” The old man winked, and bellowed, “Who the hell is messing with my dogs?” “Savannah Police, sir. We need you to bring the dogs indoors, sir!” He stood at the door, opening it to the width the chain allowed. “What the hail for?” “There’s blood on the wood fence leading up to your yard, and then on your fence, sir—we need to search your back yard.” “Do you honestly think my dogs would allow a stranger in my yard? Listen to them!” “Who’s in there? Open the door, Mr. Elstrom.” “Me and a friend of mine,” the old man snarled. “A very close friend. I may be old, but I like to have a good time. When did the City of Savannah get 49

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interested in my dates?” He did not just say that! The cop muttered something, and the old man laughed softly. “Oh, yeah, ain’t it a shame? Think nothing of it, young man. And if you want to come by sometime when you’re not on duty...” The cops left. Quickly. I put my fist on a neat row of tiles and rested my forehead on it, laughing silently. Unfortunately, that made my head hurt a whole lot worse. “I’d kill for some acetaminophen and a glass of iced tea.” A tall glass of iced tea appeared at my elbow. “That stuff is purely poison, son. Every once in a while you catch a hint of it on the news, but those drug companies own all the broadcast networks, and of course they smother the truth fast as they see it. You can have aspirin, if you like. Aspirin is a purely natural substance.” I didn’t correct him. I just thanked him, picked up three of the four aspirin displayed on his pink50

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lined white palm, and washed them down with gulps of syrupy tea. Sweet. I needed to call Ron Sweet. I scooped the tiles into the bag, then shrugged out of the undersized backpack and dumped it onto the tabletop. Heigh ho! Cash. Twenties, fifties, and hundreds, with goo flowing over them. My mini-computer, with a deep dent in the cover, was oozing the fluid. Not generally a good sign, that. The pack’s side pockets held charging cords for my phone and Turn’s, my ‘puter and Turn’s. The old man spread out some of the cash with his pointer knuckle, not leaving a fingerprint. Not touching the goo either. “Young man, I think it’s time you told me what’s going on.” “I wish I knew.” I checked the screen. Ka-blooey. Good thing I’d had something more substantial than a tablet. The keyboard was trashed as well. Motherboard would be in shards under it. The hard drive might still function, if it hadn’t shorted out. 51

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“Do you have a computer I could hook up to my hard drive, if it still works? I need to call Turn’s boss at the FBI, and his home number is here.” “I don’t know how it will work, but you can try.” He led me to a small room, or maybe a large closet, with an antique radio set-up on one wall and a tidy computer desk on the other. “Great—Do you have any very small screwdrivers, like for your eyeglasses?” “I have a repair kit for my glasses.” Took about five minutes to link my hard drive as an external memory device for his desk job. I didn’t worry about the old dude getting access to my deep dark secrets. Aside from the encryption, having a family like mine leaves you a whole lot safer trusting random strangers on the street. Turn had a lot more to lose with his secrets, but if Father had taken him, his reputation would be the least of his worries. My C drive. Addresses. For those I used a straight I=B=M cipher, which is simple enough to read on 52

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the fly. I dialed Ron Sweet’s home number with a flourish. A woman answered, her voice heavy and forbidding. “Sweet.” “May I speak to Ron, please?” She didn’t ask who was calling. She asked the bad question. “Are you a member of the immediate family?” Either he’d won the Powerball or shit had fallen on his head too. I didn’t know enough about his family to lie. Would the truth do me any good? “No, ma’am, but I do need to talk to Mr. Sweet. It’s imperative.” I didn’t say “life or death.” Turn said people calling the tip line say that all the time, and using it loses them any scrap of credibility they might otherwise have. “Come Monday, you can call the office, sir. If it can’t wait until Monday morning, you need to call Atlanta. Hold on—I’ll give you the numbers.” 53

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“Ma’am, I’m calling about Turner Scott. He’s in trouble.” “He can get in line. You have a pen? Here’s the Atlanta number.” I keyed in the Atlanta number, and she hung up on me. Hung up on me. I stared at my phone. Did it feel that bad when I clicked off without saying good bye? No, because I let the conversation wrap up first. Always. I didn’t just cut people off. Did I? The old man came in and pushed a radio-thing aside, to make room for Miss Georgie’s scooter-chair. Something about the two of them reminded me of my nieces on Christmas Eve, practically sparkling with excitement. Well, duh. They’d probably been waiting forty years for some decent excitement in this neighborhood. “Catch me up!” the old lady demanded. Why not? I needed to organize things in my own head, if only to figure out what to do from here. 54

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“Well, Turn got a strange phone call from area code 520, wherever that is.” Mr. Elstrom nodded sharply. “Tucson area.” Tucson? Mountain time zone. I checked quickly. No, Tucson doesn’t use daylight savings time. So Race...yeah. “This past fall he was working on some kind of big investigation. Turn had the Jacksonville part of it. His buddy Race, a cop but not FBI, went out west more than a year ago to work on that part of it. I think he was assigned to Tucson. Definitely, somewhere right close to Mexico.” I hesitated. I didn’t know anything more about Race that I could tell people. The old lady made a face. “The Cuban. Intense fellow, with hard eyes and an undisciplined mustache. He roomed with Turner while my granddaughter was visiting last year—no, the year before, because she still had her Buick. Those two fought all the time.” Heigh ho! Turn didn’t like bickering. Constant 55

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fighting would have vexed him... The old man tisked. “Schadenfreud.” I blinked. “I beg your pardon?” “Taking joy in somebody else’s misfortune. We all do it, son, but you don’t need to be so obvious.” Caught. My face heated. I called up an area code map, and sure enough 520 was the Tucson area code. “Right,” I said, and that sounded like Turn, and I blushed again. “Anyway, right after Race called from there, some Mexicans busted into the house.” “Cubans!” she interjected. “Mario-lee-toes!” I shook my head. “No reason to complicate this. We have a southern Arizona connection, maybe two of them, and a Mexico connection. The guy Turner was homing in on in Florida fled to Mexico.” “How do you know?” Mother said so. No, that wasn’t accurate. I’d heard rumors, fleshed out at the courthouse when I’d gone to refuse to answer another round of questions from the legal team I’d dubbed Rimmer, Felcher, & Whine. 56

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Then I’d overheard Mother’s voice as I was opening the door to leave the building, and I’d paused so we would pass while she was adjusting to the indoors light rather than while I was blinking and blind in the sunlight. One of the Ladies Who Lunch came through the door first, saying, “Mexico! You are kidding me!” and Mother had given me a quick, trapped glance, like it was the last thing she’d wanted me to overhear, before reverting to her normal Hollywood smile. “Son?” “I overheard it.” “Not from Turner Scott you didn’t! He’s trueblue and FBI too!” Sounded like a comic book by-line. “I just know, okay? I can’t tell you how I know everything.” They looked at each other, messages flashing in the twitch of a lip here and eyebrow there. How could people do that? Their focus shifted to me. The old lady smiled, her face falling into soft, comfortable 57

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wrinkles. You couldn’t get a stronger contrast with my mother’s smile, not if you looked for ten years. “We wouldn’t want you to break anyone’s trust, hon. You just tell us whatever you’re comfortable saying, okay?” That was...generous. Suspiciously so. But without Turn or his FBI contacts, these people were the best backup I could draw on. Whatever agendas they might have, the wildest conspiracy freak wouldn’t believe these two old people were secretly in league with Father. Or Mother. I thought of something, and checked a few breaking-news channels to see if Ron Sweet might be mentioned anywhere. Not him, and not Turner K. Scott. Nor was anybody talking about kidnapped FBI agents. Had Sweet been kidnapped? If not, then what happened to him? Was there a connection? If something had happened during the work day, so that Turn knew about it, Turn wouldn’t have been 58

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lounging in a china-plate restaurant at dinner time. Did anyone know something had happened to two FBI agents in one evening? Anyone but me? And whoever believed me? With the seniors watching me with kittenlike intensity, I checked through a couple of my sources until I found an online buddy who knew how to hack the local emergency channels and databases. Info came quickly then. Someone had done a hit-and-run on Ron Sweet. He was in fair condition. The police were looking for a delivery-type truck, maybe a snack vendor truck, with blue and red or blue and orange color blocks on it. They’d been blue, red, and orange. Why hadn’t I noted the tag? Miss Georgie laid an age-spotted hand on my wrist. “Spill it, hon. What have you found?” “That truck that came by in the wee hours this morning, remember it? I think it’s the one they 59

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hauled off Turner Scott in. I think it’s also the truck that did a hit-and-run on his boss this evening.” The old lady hissed in her breath sharply. “Well, I swan.” I found a traffic report, which didn’t name Sweet but did describe the truck, and showed it to them. “So what do we do now? Go to the local police, go to Atlanta, or wait for Monday and go to the FBI?” “I don’t do police, just like you don’t do hospitals, okay? Not going to happen. But come Monday, I’d really like you to go to the police.” The old hand tightened on my wrist. “Me. I saw the fight.” “Okay, you.” They wouldn’t believe her. No more than they’d believe me. But she could give it a try if she wanted. “I have to go after Turn. See if I can help him.” “How could you help more on the move than you could here?” 60

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I could maybe find Race. No, the odds of stumbling across the one Latino I might recognize out of however many hundred thousand of them lived in Tucson Arizona were not worth calculating. “Helping here means dealing with the police. Again, that’s not gonna happen. Helping there? Well, I’ve got information and money. I can get a phone. Turn probably doesn’t have any of those. I’ll find him; I’ll let him have the resources I’ve brought; and then we’ll see what Mr. FBI can accomplish. First trick is to get there.” “Hon, you got plenty of money to buy a plane ticket.” “Yes, ma’am, but I don’t have ID. They took my wallet, and my passport is in Turn’s safe deposit box. The bank isn’t likely to think I have a right to the contents of that box.” The old man grinned. “I can get you there without a picture ID. Buddies of mine have been working on that ever since Homeland Security repealed the Bill 61

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of Rights. That long a trip costs out the wazoo, and you have to be flexible, but it can be done.” Miss Georgie clapped her gnarled hands. “He sounds like he’s full of bull-hooey, son, but he does know the most peculiar people and he does turn up with pictures from the oddest places.” Mr. Elstrom gestured at the keyboard. “Mind?” I pointedly looked away while he did his signin, though I noticed it was seven keystrokes with the last two using the shift key. I can’t help noticing things like that. Hm. I had to get away before I absorbed all his private stuff. “Sir? Do you mind if I get a glass of water? And maybe some of your tea for Miss Georgie?”

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Chapter Three

Half an hour later, I was hoping my astonishment didn’t show as a trim young woman in brilliantorange coveralls and matching earphones escorted me onto a four-seater plane with shrink-wrapped cardboard boxes crammed into every nook including the back two seats. I didn’t ask; I just paid my money and played my part. She took me to a trailer park full of private planes outside Pensacola, where I helped unload the boxes while waiting for my next ride. The next plane, piloted by a Jack Sprat couple, was a bus-sized corporate jet with a disturbing hiccup to the engine. I didn’t expect to sleep, 63

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especially with that hiccup jerking the seat under me at unpredictable intervals, but woke up over a treasure trove of jewel-toned LEDs and grain lights with huge dead areas and a black oil-slick of a river through it. “New Orleans?” “Yah!” We touched down an hour west of there, on a dead-end dirt road among planted pines equidistant and perfectly erect, like soldiers on a parade ground. Supposedly, we were somewhere between Lake Charles and Houston. I got out alone and watched the plane angle north, probably to its official destination. The next plane wasn’t coming until dawn, but someone had left a camo-pattern mosquito tent, or hunting blind, with a cot in it. I lay there sweating, using Mr. Elstrom’s dog-hair-covered gym bag for a pillow, listening to the mosquitoes and the bullbats and the frogs and distant 18-wheelers. Had I been dropped off as agreed or at some forsaken spot chosen at 64

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random? Tai chi. That would do it. Circular mindset. Blank out the scared side of the brain by focusing on simple breathing. By putting the cot outside the tent, I got just enough room to do it without becoming a mosquito all-you-can-suck extravaganza. When I was itching and dripping with sweat, and had pretty much depleted my blood sugar supply, I dragged the cot back in, killed the mosquitoes that lit on me in that moment, and flopped onto the cot. I was still in the middle of nowhere, with no way to tell whether I’d been placed at a rendezvous point or thrown out the window like an empty beer bottle. In which case I really hoped I didn’t meet the owner of this tent. The night was hot and wet, heavy against my skin. And empty. Made me think too much of the possibility Turn might be gone. I’m not afraid of being alone, no more than I’m afraid of dying. Either 65

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prospect sucked, but it wasn’t fearsome. The thought of being alone because Turn was gone, though—that was different. Turn is solid. Turn is good. The world has a reason to exist, if it has Turn in it. Okay, maybe it was time to try sleeping again. The gym bag made a lumpy pillow. It held a change of underwear and socks (also courtesy of Mr. Elstrom), cords that might prove useful if I found my phone or Turn’s, a ten-dollar phone that would let me check email, and what was left of the cash. The jet ride alone had cost more than a commercial ticket to Tucson would have. The ten-dollar phone couldn’t find a signal out here, wherever here really was. I was alone, deadcertain alone. With no way to tell whether I’d been fucked except wait for dawn, and the plane that would or would not come then. My deodorant failed long before I could see the camo pattern of the tent. 66

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I got up to pee then, and had no sooner zipped my pants than a Piper Cub touched down in the middle of the strip and roared up to my tent. I skirted one wing painted with glitter-edged flames and the ace of spades reversed, which seemed like an invitation to the worst kind of luck. The pilot, a man with a streaky waist-length beard, waved me to open the door. I obeyed, and gagged at the stale tobacco. Mr. Bearded Dude leaned over the passenger seat and handed me a note, You’re Joshua? “No!” I screamed at the top of my voice, shaking my head for good measure. “Ken!” He grinned, and thumbs-upped me. Oh, shit. Every surface was covered with cigarette ash, and butts littered the floor like turds in an overused catbox. But it was a plane, and he hadn’t asked me for government-approved photo ID, so I got in. He spun the plane to face the length of the landing strip, grinned again, and took off. Within minutes, I was seriously considering 67

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trying out a few butts as ear plugs. Instead, I locked my hands over my ears, hunched forward over the gym bag, and prayed for a quick trip. Note to anyone who hasn’t guessed it: Crossing Texas isn’t quick. We outstripped the dawn in a few minutes, although I could see lit-up clouds ahead, and shortly afterward landed in darkness on the T of a gravel road. Without cutting off the engines, the driver handed me another slip of paper, barely legible in the dashboard lights. Gas, grass, or ass. I found a stub of pencil among the butts and wrote, Are we there yet, Daddy? Are we there yet? Show me what you got. I counted out the $600 Elstrom had said this leg would cost me, and put it under my foot among the ashes and butts. The pilot gave me another grinning thumbs-up. His teeth were streaked and misaligned, like a picket fence around an abandoned cemetery. Movement! A man in a black t-shirt appeared outside the pilot’s window—just appeared like a 68

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ninja among the shadows. He had a sign-language chat with the pilot. I clutched my bag I was to have a co-passenger? Which of us would have to sit among the tarp-covered lumps behind these two seats? As it turned out, neither of us. The ninja strode back into the underbrush, then became visible on my side of the plane with two rolling suitcases. He handed those heavy fuckers to me, and I wrestled them between the seats, sort of nestling them in the dips among the tarped lumps. I thought all pilots cared about strapping down things like that, but as soon as the door shut and the guy waved bye-bye to us, Mr. Beard revved his engines and took off. Okay, whatever. Not my business. Smugglers have to make a living too. No one can stop them, anyway. Not my business so long as we didn’t crash. Or get arrested. Fuck, my fingerprints were on both of those suitcases. And on the boxes I’d helped unload in 69

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Florida. Fuckfuckfuck. I’ve been acting like a fool. Get a grip. So I took a little risk. No going back. No erasing it. Eyes forward. Two fueling stops later, in late afternoon, I finally debarked at Tucson, at a private-plane airport next to the main one. The sun blasted my eyes, no matter how I shaded them with my hands. How had I managed to come to the desert without sunglasses, a hat, or even a visor? Oh, yeah. Mr. Elstrom had given me half an hour to find a cab, cross town, find an unfamiliar airstrip, and board that first plane before it took off. I hadn’t had time to think. Now I was too tired to think. A hotel. I needed a bed, a shower, a big drink and a big pile of French fries to replace the salt and fluids I’d sweated out, a heavy dose of sinus pills, a heavier dose of headache pills, and a place to buy a change of clothes. Not necessarily in that order. I checked the wastebaskets at the rental-car return area, and found a local map 70

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with the closest motels marked. Somehow I was on my last handful of twentydollar bills. There should have been two more hundreds, but there weren’t. Worry about it later. First get some rest. No, first get a change of clothes. Meaning, with my funds, I’d have to walk to the nearest store. Meaning, first I needed to get some food. To get real food at non-airport prices, I’d need to walk some distance anyway. At least it wasn’t muggy. If only I didn’t have to walk around in my own ashtray-scented haze. Half an hour later, I was staring at a strip mall, wondering where to spend my scant funds when I spied a compact burrito place, its cinder-block walls painted brilliant turquoise. It smelled of roast pork, beans with cumin, onions, and fried cornmeal, and I bet the beer was— No. No beer. Choices I make when sober raise 71

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eyebrows. Choices I make after a few beers are the sort that might get a person arrested. My major goal in life—foremost among the goals I have a chance of actually meeting—is to avoid ever getting arrested again. Defeated-looking men slouched over weathered, splintery picnic tables, nursing at brown bottles wrapped in paper bags. My sister says she always has to slow down when she sees bums like that, just to make sure I’m not among them. Sarah thinks a lot of me, obviously. Though she let me practically raise both her baby girls, when they were just born. To avoid the tempting smell of beer, I went to the generic “restaurant” two lots farther down. Got a plate of French fries topped with chili, the way everyone here seemed to be eating them, but the chili sucked. I got another plate of fries plain. Washed them down with a strawberry shake and iced tea, and resented every non-porkalicious bite. But it filled me up, and would fuel me to a hotel 72

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where I could clean up and rest. Tomorrow was scheduled for remedying any missed connection, and since I hadn’t missed any, defaulted to downtime. Maybe I could spend it walking around, getting the feel of this strange place. See if the libraries here had free computers I could use to get online. On Monday, Mr. Elstrom would text me with the outcome of his conversation with the FBI. If he could find out, he would also let me know how Sweetie Sweet was doing. I didn’t know Sweet well enough to worry about him, but I worried anyway. The dollar store had T-shirts and shorts for cheap. It also had an assortment of headache powders, but it didn’t carry any form of pseudoephedrine, and that phenylpropalomine just doesn’t work. I settled for generic Benadryl, and slugged down two of the psychedelic-pink pills with an orange-mango soda. The soda was overly sweet, but good. My third drink in an hour tasting that good probably meant I’d let 73

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myself get more dehydrated than I realized, so I got a lime soda of the same brand to sip on while I searched out a motel. Found an eight-unit motel, kind of run-down but the sign said Free WiFi. Not that I had a ‘puter with me, but I liked to spend my dollars on places that catered to my kind. Also, it had plenty of openings. The curtains were wide open on nearly every window, which they wouldn’t be if the rooms were occupied. The inside of the lobby was improbably clean. Pristine. The carpet was not only new and plush, but freshly shampooed on top of that. I heard somebody singing sweet and soulful on the radio. “Driver’s license, state ID, or passport, sir?” I blinked stupidly at the woman, whose oversized glasses had been going out of style about the time I was born. “I don’t have ID. I was mugged.” “I’ll need a police report to establish that, sir.” “I just established it. You mean you want it 74

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verified.” “Whatever. You got a report?” Of course not. I leaned over the counter, tapping it, searching for something to say. A sifting of ashes trailed behind my sleeve. She stared at it, her lip curling ever so slightly. Heigh ho. I have your number now, lady. “You must have spent half your shift cleaning the floor in here. I need a room right now, and the first part of it I’m going to use is the can. If you don’t let me have a room, right now, I’m going to use your carpet. Do I make myself clear?” She looked over the top rims of her huge glasses at me. “You mess with my carpet, sir, and I’ll have the cops here quicker than you can fart. My fiance’ is on the force; we get patrols the rest of South Tucson would have to be in flames to get.” Not cops. Not cops. Not cops. I forced a smile and turned around in front of her, slowly. She wouldn’t 75

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know the sweat on my spine was cold, and wholly attributable to her mention of the cops. “Cigarette ashes, ma’am. Picture me, wrestling with cops, grinding blood, sweat, piss, and ashes deep into each tuft of fibers in your nice new carpet. You’ll scrub for hours, and smell me for weeks anyway.” I shook a leg, and ashes sifted down about my foot. “Don’t you want to rent me a room to clean up in?” She pushed her glasses up and glared at me through them. “Can you afford a room, having been mugged and all?” I registered using my brother Dean’s name and address. We have a vague resemblance, or would if I had his and Turn’s meaty build. I’m a blond Doberman and he’s a blond Rottweiler. To put it another way, I play soccer while they used to play football—and not as quarterbacks. I showered, changed clothes, and went outside a little after dark to sit at a cement picnic table 76

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to watch a spectacular windstorm and lightning display. The lightning flashed from cloud to cloud instead of ground to cloud. I could see the clouds as the ground of another world, and gnarled old tree roots incinerating themselves in laser-bright flashes. I was soaked immediately, and too awe-struck to care. Why was I the only one out here admiring it? “Señor Turner?” I turned, and looked up into the barrel of a pistol. A revolver. A hand held it, but don’t ask me a thing about the rest of the guy. All that mattered was that black hole, dangling a fat drop of rainwater that reflected the flickering lightning and the pink neon from the Free WiFi sign. “Dude, I don’t have any money. Hay no dinero. Um, no hay dinero.” “Shut up. Come.” Ready or not, I guess my ride’s here. The Spanish for sure, dude, anything you say comes out like a single clattering word. I didn’t have to say it out loud, though. I simply went to the primer-streaked 77

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SUV with the open door and climbed in next to a bald man in a wife-beater with tattoo sleeves and thick fists resting on his denim-clad thighs. I didn’t look at his face. He might be looking for a reason to cold-cock me, and I didn’t want to give him one. Was he the boyfriend of the front desk lady I’d pissed off? Or merely a buddy willing to do the ultimate coply favor, here on the outskirts of town? Someone climbed in behind me, someone who had eaten lots of garlic today, and dropped a cloth bag over my head. Over it, he tied a quick, efficient blindfold. If they were going to kill me, they wouldn’t care who—or what—I saw. I didn’t ask any questions, though. He’d said shut up, and he probably still meant it. The rain on the roof of the SUV drummed hard enough to discourage conversation anyway. Even when the rain ended, though, nobody spoke. The ride took way too long for a trip to the 78

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Tucson jail, or to whatever easily hosed alleyway the cops here liked to use. Maybe we were heading for a spot out in the desert, where they could beat me to a pulp and leave me for the coyotes. I rubbed my sweating palms into the cloth seat, hoping to leave a DNA imprint. Not that anyone would ever care to check. We stopped to pee, apparently by the side of the road. Later, we stopped at what my nose said was a gas station and I was asked, quite politely, if I needed a beer. No thanks, I’ve had plenty. I asked for a soda instead, if he would be so kind. Wonder of wonders, I got one, a grapefruit flavored one with a straw to tuck up under the bag that remained over my face. If they planned to kill me, or even thump me around, why make nice with the soda? So what’s the deal? We stopped twice more beside the road to pee, the last time with amused grumbling from two guys 79

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and a whine in the third one’s voice. Not in Spanish. Not in English. Some Indian language? Wait, had they mistaken me for someone with political importance? At the second gas stop, I was handed a lemon or lime soda. At the same time, they handed around hot spicy-smelling food, but not to me. I just got to sit there sipping on my soda and smelling the good stuff while listening to them rustle paper and chew. Fuckers. I dozed off at some point. Woke to hear soft snores, whispers in the Indio language as well as some Spanish I couldn’t make out. Sounded like one spoke only Spanish, one only the Indio language, and two spoke both. After a while, I tuned in to the accent, and began making out bits of the conversation. They were speculating about whether The Cuban could do the job. He was strong enough to be a lieutenant. Did he have the balls to be the strongman? 80

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Luckily for me, they had strong, vulgar opinions on the subject. Polite Spanish, school Spanish, I can follow pretty well. I’m more fluent in gutter talk like this, though, having spent so much time listening in on the laborers during various of Mother’s house or yard projects. I’d learned verga years before I’d learned muy amable. Toward the end of seventh grade, I’d once lost my temper with my Spanish teacher and used words she swore didn’t exist. I still got a week’s suspension for saying them. Father had indicated his disappointment by holding my head underwater in the back yard carp pool, effortlessly pinning my skinny thrashing bod with his muscled bulk until I passed out. When I came to, he was removing the long s-curved handle from the red-painted hand pump at the deep end of the pool. I really thought he was going to beat me with it, that I was going to be crippled or killed for using words I didn’t really understand yet. 81

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He didn’t hit me. He snapped a handcuff to my ankle and to the eye where the handle had attached to the pump. He left me there for the week I’d been banned from school, and celebrated sunset every evening by half-drowning me again. Nobody at the hospital would believe that’s how I’d caught pneumonia. Nobody who wears a uniform believes me in anything, ever, no matter what. But that was the week my brother Dean stopped calling me Little Liar. He never brought me French fries or comic books to pass the time, though, like Turn did. I really wanted to live through this long night, this long ride. I really wanted to be a person who could, some day, be the one who saved Turn. I asked, in English, if they would stop to let me pee. The car stopped immediately, and the door opened. So I knew we were in the middle of nowhere even before I heard the wolves howling and smelled 82

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the flatly sweetish desert wind. Was it cold because deserts are cold at night, or because we were in mountains? Either way, it seemed like a great place to dump a body. But they showed no interest in making my body something to dump. All in all, they treated me extremely well. Frighteningly well. I pictured the four of them as manga ronin, practicing their best manners, but it wasn’t much fun. I tried to sleep. Reminded myself of lines from novels about how rest is a weapon, and how sleep deprivation is a primo interrogation tool. But anything they said, should they get talkative, might be important too. Over a period of hours, the road went from rough to smooth to rough again, and eventually to smooth. We parked in an echoing garage, where I was told in halting English that I would be gagged and handcuffed if I caused a problem. 83

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I promised not to cause a problem. If I heard coplike voices nearby, there might be a reason to yell, but among the passing and parking vehicles and occasional horns, I heard no reason to risk what little freedom I had. When they left me alone on the car seat, I turned sideways and lay down to uncramp my back and get some feeling back in my butt. Nobody objected. When I put my feet against the window, however, two voices together snapped at me to put them on the floor. Okay, so I hadn’t been left unguarded. I dozed a little, waking up for indecipherable whispers here, far-off sirens or gunfire there, and eventually for a change of the guard. The new guys were less bulky, and smelled like vegetarians. They didn’t talk at all around me. They could have been Mexican, Georgian, or Tibetian, for all I knew. I said I was hungry. They didn’t respond. A while later, though, they rattled a paper bag and passed out cold burritos. My mouth watered from 84

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the smell. Before I could complain, one was pressed into my hand. I blurted, “thank you!” to cover my surprise. Then recovered and said “gracias” too. No one responded. Luckily, I’d finished my burrito when the road went very rough, throwing me against the man on my left or the man on my right at random. I held my teeth clamped together. This kind of jostling can make me bite the numb side of my mouth, maybe doing serious damage before I tasted enough blood to know I was hurt. My jaw ached by the time the road smoothed out again. The sighs on either side of me gave hope the road would remain smooth a while. It did stay smooth, with moderate to heavy traffic. We stopped for more gas after a while, and kept on driving. A long, long time. My butt went wholly numb, and my feet ached for lack of movement. 85

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When we finally stopped, I was told in rough Spanish to go through the door, and—as if in afterthought—was thanked for being a gentleman. What the fuck do you say to that? I maneuvered out of the vehicle, and let a hand on my elbow guide me up a single step. A heavy door opened. Air conditioning and the smell of bleach, hit my face. I stumbled forward. The door groaned behind me, and locked. Wherever this was, I was here.

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I cautiously removed the blindfold, and then the bag. The room glowed painfully white all around, except for some gray office furniture on the left hand wall, where the window was. No welcoming committee. I paced the room, stretching my back and legs so they could revert to proper working order. The door-lock needed a key on this side. The window, high on the opposite wall, had chicken wire between me and the glass, and yellow-painted rebar on the outside. Beyond it, the dusk was closing in. I kept pacing. 87

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Slick white paint on the walls showed cement where it had chipped. Metal cages guarded the light fixtures. Between them, nine thick eyebolts dotted the ceiling. The gray plastic laundry sink on the wall opposite the window had no plug or drainpipe. The cement floor sloped toward the brass grille of a drain directly under the sink. The bleach ate at my sinuses. Maybe the “rubber rooms” I’d occasionally been locked in hadn’t been all that bad. The gunmetal gray file cabinet was locked. The gunmetal gray desk’s drawers were all locked. The door made half a dozen clicking sounds, and opened. I stood, hurriedly moving away from the desk. Four men in khaki uniforms marched in, eyeing me intently. I tried to swallow. Couldn’t. No nametags. No rank insignia. But definitely a combat unit. 88

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They stepped smartly apart, half to the left and half to the right, and the man who came from behind them was Father. He’d grown exactly the mustache I’d been trying to talk Turn into growing. In less than one second flat, I lost my lifelong fascination with mustaches. He’d lost the traces of soft weight he’d gained since my teens. Now, hard blocks of muscle moved like fists under his skin. Fighting weight. I remembered watching him spar with his sons, and being glad I was too little to join in. The door clicked noisily behind him. Locked. He looked at me silently for a moment, and held out his left hand. One of the guards gave him an object like an orange-colored, heavy-duty, electronic toasting fork. A stock prod. I’d seen them used in movies. To herd pigs. His slapped it like a riding crop into his other 89

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palm. “You’re the boy who tried to make a queer of my son.” He spoke Spanish, not making even a pretense that it was me he was trying to communicate with. His eyes were aimed at me, but I’ve learned to read what he’s really paying attention to. Right now, it wasn’t me. I was the excuse for whatever was coming. I had to change the pattern, fast. Redefine the rules. Take the focus off what he’d declared his point to be. I made a show of rounding my eyes. Please let my Spanish be good enough to get this across. “Your son isn’t queer. He’s always on top. A man is not queer if he’s always the man. The one on bottom is the queer.” He hadn’t expected that. Puzzlement seeped in around the edges of his carefully bland expression. One of the uniformed guards muttered agreement. Father’s eyelids dropped to hide his 90

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interest in the general assent voiced around him. I’d seen exactly that expression on Turn. They looked so much alike. His face hardened. I turned quickly to his men. “Say it’s so. Any of you men could do me here without wondering what your friends would think of you!” They shrugged and nodded. “Sí, patrón. It is so.” Anthropology 101 to the rescue. Rather, a hot date with the teaching assistant for Intro to Cultures 1101. In most cultures that interest anthros, a man’s need to do the poking bit is considered natural and overwhelmingly intense; as a result, poking one’s dick into women or sheep or even other men is just what a man might do to relieve his natural urges. The one who gets poked is the queer, the not-a-man. Father stepped closer. “So, I could fuck you blind, and then hand you around to all my men, and when we were done you’d still be the only queer in the house?” 91

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My guts clenched. I tried to step back, but the wall somehow failed to open behind me. I have to get out of here. He took a step forward, trapping me between the wall, the filing cabinet, and the desk. “Kneel to me, Kenny.” “The fuck I will!” Why does my voice break like that? He smiled briefly. “That is precisely what I had in mind.” Outtahere! I pivoted, jumped atop the desk. Lightning struck, high on my leg. I screamed. Staggered. The shock struck again, in my lower back. Every muscle in my body contracted at once, with tearing force. I fell. No! Can’t be helpless! Not to him. He struck again. My vision shifted to grays and browns, blotches. My body was useless and helpless, and I hated it. Someone laughed in the distance, and someone 92

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else chuckled softly, close by. Father. Smiling gently, amiably. I was lying curled tightly atop the desk. Every part of me hurt. He leaned over me. “No, Father. Don’t.” “I’m not your father, and I’m glad of it. Never could stand your sniveling voice.” I sat up, or tried to, and raised a hand to block my view of him. My hand shook. He batted my hand aside, and backhanded the good side of my face. My head bounced off the desk. I stifled the noises bubbling in my throat. I could handle a beating, if that’s all it was. He grabbed a fistful of hair above my ear, and drew my face to meet his. no I reared up, got my knees under me, but he held my face where he wanted it. His mouth brushed 93

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mine with mock tenderness. His mustache smelled of old cheese, and felt like cockroach legs. I threw up on him. Someone laughed. Same old story. Only not. Father swore, let go my hair and again backhanded me. Pain exploded across my face. I hit him back. The impact felt good in my hand, like something I’d always wanted and never had. I came off the desk and drove my fists into him. Again. Again. He hit me too, but the impacts were blasts of sensation, like sound. Nothing more. I caught most of his punches on my hands, some skidding up my forearms. They mattered less than the ability to hit him. Again. Again. Again. I couldn’t see. Didn’t need to see. Couldn’t hear. Didn’t need to. Couldn’t think. Didn’t need to think. 94

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I needed to hit, hit, hit! Everything faded, blended into the syncopated impacts. When the target went down, out of easy reach, I picked it up and beat it against a dark thing that was in my way. Water sluiced over me, shockingly cold. I yelled. My throat felt scraped. Dead weight dragged my hands. I looked down. I gripped a wrist in one hand. An ankle in the other. They were wet with red. The dangling, caved-in head dripped red. The mustache dripped red...blood. The eyes— I dropped it. Him. It. “No, Father. No.” Blood. Everywhere, blood. I drowned in the raw-liver stench. Out of here. I have to get out of here. I spun, and ran. Men scattered in front of me. I hit the door. It didn’t give. I clawed at the bolt with blood-slicked hands. Locked. 95

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I have to get—outtahere! The window! I stumbled past the body and the wrecked, red-spattered desk to reach it. Wire cut my hands. I spit blood through my clenched teeth and watched it drip in bubbled stripes down the glass past the wire. Beyond it, the night mocked me: vast and dark and unreachable. Unreachable. I leaned, shivering, into the wire. Waiting for the fists. Waiting for the fingers to grip me like pliers digging into my flesh. It wouldn’t matter, I told myself. It would hurt, but it wouldn’t matter. I lied. Twice more, the water splashed over me while I clung to the sharp, ungiving wire. I hung there, panting, vaguely aware that I was close to passing out. Couldn’t think of what to do about it. Almost could, but the hovering solution refused to light. 96

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The door opened. Men spoke in hushed, churchly whispers. “Kendall? Can you hear me?” The door had opened. Maybe I could make it out. If it was still open. If they didn’t stop me. But I couldn’t let go the wire. Couldn’t give up the chance it might dissolve in my grasp and let me go free into the night. “Easy, there. Let me help you.” English. English? A hand settled on my forearm. Burned against my chilled skin. I barely flinched. Here it was. It wouldn’t matter. I could bury myself, deep inside, and it wouldn’t matter. Inhale two three four five... Inhale two three four five six... Two hands. Smaller than mine, cassia brown with a fighter’s callused tree-bark knuckles, but with clean, precisely cut nails. They were so warm. They rested a moment on my wrists, then pried my 97

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fingers gently out of the chicken wire. Brushed a drop of water from the stump of my pinkie finger. “You’re either Kendall Turner or Yakuza.” Huh? “Come on, now. We need to get this shit off you. A shower. Yes, let’s get you a nice, hot shower to warm you up and clean you off. Come with me, Kendall. Come.” He took my bloody hands and folded them together in front of me, and led me away, wrapping me in his voice as much as in his arms. I went numbly with him.

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Men—some in khaki, some in a blue uniform—made way for us, ducking their heads in respect, and opened the door. On the other side waited the open door of a large vehicle, half SUV and half Hummer. The man turned to back into the vehicle, climbing the footboard unerringly, all without letting go my hands. I followed, nauseated and uncertain, shivering in my wet clothes. I had no option. At that moment, I needed his hands, his body heat. Needed his quiet, strong voice surrounding me. When the truck stopped, we went through 99

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another steel-framed door and stepped down into a torch-lit atrium with a fountain and a cluster of potted kumquats, their fruit full-sized but still green. A door framed with trellised pink bougainvillea opened to a small, cozy room with a fireplace, leather chairs, and shelves of books. We skirted the carpet, my wet shoes making farting noises with each step on the tile. I took care not to brush against the books. History, some in English, some in Spanish. Napoleon. Che. Giap. Sun Tzu. Management techniques. Fourth Generation Warfare. Physical conditioning exercises. Psychology. Group dynamics. Negotiation techniques. Interrogation techniques. Interrogation? “I don’t know anything,” I blurted. He could be nice to me if he wanted, and more likely would be as cruel as he wanted, but I had no information that would be valuable to him. He tightened his grip on my hands. “Hush, now. 100

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It’s all right. First you need to clean up and get comfortable. Everything else can wait.” His north Florida accent matched mine. I wouldn’t have recognized it if I hadn’t spent the last couple of months listening to Georgia accents. He turned on the light to a stone-tiled bathroom with a huge glass-walled shower stall and a tiled tub. No toilet. I saw him in the mirror, a strong, too-handsome face with a neatly trimmed black beard and extraordinarily dark eyes. The pale, lobotomized-looking geek with the hunched spine and with wet, bloody hair dripping in his face would be me. I’m sick. No, I couldn’t be sick. I breathed by the numbers to make sure. One of the blues brought white towels and set them on a marble shelf. Another brought a fresh white shirt, and at the man’s nod hung it on a towel hook. 101

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He opened the glass door of the shower stall. “Step in here and clean up.” I hesitated, balking against the pressure of his hand at my back. Step in here and take off your clothes. Wet as they were, nasty as they were, they were clothes. He was saying Get naked. Bare yourself in front of me and my men. That shower was bigger than the one I’d lost my virginity in, on the night of the junior prom. The row of sturdy hooks set at about a seven-foot height didn’t look like they were made for towels. A seat had been built into the corner opposite the door. I wanted to sit down. I wanted a seat to hold my weight, a solid wall to tell my back which way was straight up. I tried not to think of that Russian Mafia movie where the guy got interrogated in a shower. Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. “Really, mister, I don’t have any information you could want. Nobody told me anything. I’m not the 102

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kind of guy smart people confide in.” “I understand you might think so. But in my experience, people like you who’ve spent quite a long time on the inside of a situation sometimes know things they don’t realize are valuable.” Valuable. What he thought I knew was valuable. He’d protect it, and me, until he knew otherwise. Still I hesitated. My face ached fiercely. I couldn’t think past the obvious. Maybe I wasn’t even seeing the obvious. He put a hand on my shoulder. “First things first. You need to wash off. You have blood and shit all over you. We’ll talk once you’ve cleaned up.” If I had any pull, I wanted to exercise it here, to maintain my options. “I’ll need clean clothes if I’m going to shower. I don’t like being undressed when talking to people I don’t know.” He nodded, and spoke Spanish to whoever waited outside the open door. “Bring him something clean of Tido’s.” 103

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I hesitated, but couldn’t think of any option better than taking that at face value. Blood was collecting in my mouth; I needed to spit or swallow. Couldn’t make myself spit on this nice floor, so I stepped into the enclosure and spit in the shower drain. “Where’s Turner Scott?” “Elsewhere. Please clean up. You reek, you know.” Translation: Please do what you’re told before I have to send men in there with you to get it done. While the water heated, I stripped off my nasty clothes and dropped them to splat on the floor by my feet. Four new bars of soap lined up on a shelf engraved with a honeysuckle vine. The first bar smelled of sandalwood, which stirred too many memories. The second was clear; I don’t like clear soaps. The third was almond, creamy with bits of grit in it. That would work. I scrubbed the clotted blood from under my nails, and out of my hair, trying to ignore the comings and 104

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goings on the outside of the glass wall. The good side of my face was one throbbing toothache. My hands felt like they’d been beating on bricks, and my fingers stung in the pink lather. Time kept speeding up and slowing down. I had trouble standing straight. Like I was personally responsible to keep the world from tilting, and like I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. This was more than the usual aftermath of an adrenaline rush. I spit blood. Two of the molars on the good side of my face moved under pressure. If they came out, how could I afford to replace them? The titanium screws and fake teeth on the other side had cost Duval County’s cover-my-ass fund a fortune. Getting a cheap bridge after that would be a pity. The inner cheek had also split. That’s what kept bleeding. I rinsed pink suds from my hair. Pink like brains. Father. I had to lean my forehead against the glass wall. Inhale two three four— 105

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The man snatched open the shower door, killed the water flow. “Kenny?” Raising my hand, I shook my head to say I didn’t need help. He took my hand. His grip anchored me in his reality. “Sit a moment.” I took a counted breath. “No, I can stand. And it’s not Kenny. Call me dick-for-brains before you call me Kenny.” His other hand found the back of my neck. Reality shifted, centered on the triangle of his hands and his grim face with its fringe of beard. “Okay. Now, sit.” I sat. He stood a minute, holding me by the hand and by the neck, until I shivered in the draft from the open door. Then he backed away. Cut the water back on. Shut the door. When I glanced out, he was sitting on a chair he’d procured from somewhere. He was watching 106

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me, one ankle resting casually on his other knee, his hands loosely folded atop his ankle. He still wore a wet, blood-stained shirt, ignoring the clean one hanging beside him. A tall man in blue brought a neatly folded blue outfit, set it on a shelf, and left with a murmur and a half-bow. The man in the chair barely nodded to acknowledge him, keeping his stare on me. Fascinated. Why? He saw what I did to Father. My guts wrenched. What I did to a human being. I couldn’t throw up. Nothing there. But my body went through the violent motions, the whiplash knocking me to my knees. Time passed. I let it. Finally I knelt in the clear, clean water and stared at the drain with its miniature whirlpool. Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Hold two three four five. Exhale two three four five six seven 107

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eight nine ten. Emptiness. Calm. Emptiness. I got off my knees and sat on the back corner seat for a moment. The hot water had gone cool. However big the hot water tank was here, I’d outlasted it. My fingers and palms were deeply wrinkled, raw at the knuckles but no longer bleeding. I looked through the glass. Was he squeamish? No, calculating. He looked like Father. Turn’s age. A strong-boned face that made me think of Omar Sharif, from the old movies we used to watch in the kitchen on weekends when it was too early to risk waking Mother. Who are you? I probably wouldn’t get a useful answer if I did ask. I wasn’t scripted as the interrogator in this production. Father had been putting on a show, or he’d have spoken to me in English. I hadn’t seen a camera, but there’s always a camera somewhere. Was the point 108

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to demonstrate what a baaad dude Father was? Then why mention Turn? Father had always liked Turn, a lot, though finding out Turn was FBI and was spying on him might have put a damper on his affection. Except, knowing father, he might have taken a perverse pride in Turn’s ability to pull one over on him. So why impugn his favorite son’s masculinity? Layers. I couldn’t think in layers right now. Turn was the man they’d taken. He had something...some information, right? He knew what the law knew about Father, and about Father’s cohorts here. I could guess he’d be a little resistant to interrogation, or at least to direct pressure. Okay, had someone assumed Turn would talk, or whatever, if he heard me squalling like... like a six-year-old left alone in a shed with his finger crushed in a vice. Would even that make Turn talk? He was FBI. He wasn’t responsible for me. He’d taken me in like 109

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a stray puppy, but he hadn’t made any promises. Stop it. Turn had always taken my side. Always. He had the first day he walked in the kitchen door, behind Father. I’d frozen, me with my race car under the table, trying to turn invisible when I recognized Father’s mirror-polished, steel-toed, black dress shoes. I didn’t try hard enough. Father’s voice came from on high. I know I don’t see you on the floor in your school clothes. I’d clambered out from between the chairs, bumping the stump of my pinky finger in its soiled bandage. I blinked back the tears and tried to hide behind my brother and sister, but they stepped briskly aside, leaving me alone to face him. I-I’m sorry, Father. What are the most useless words in the English language, Kenny? I couldn’t answer. He took up the whole world, with his cowboy-swirled nickel-silver belt buckle at 110

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eye level. He touched that buckle with one thumbtip, and I wet my pants. My sister groaned. My brother snickered. And then a dark-haired boy with the family’s icy gray eyes came out of nowhere, his voice coldly efficient. I’ll take care of this. Show me your room, kid. He’d picked me up, my pee-sodden clothes instantly soaking his blue T-shirt, and he’d carried me out of the kitchen. Out of danger. I’d loved him from that moment. And now I was as clean as I was likely to get. I cut off the water, and opened the door. The man gestured courteously at the towels. I walked dripping past him. Good thing I’ve never been body-shy. If he didn’t like what he saw, he didn’t have to look. He did look, though, had been looking for a while. That might mean an interest I could leverage to an advantage. I took my time toweling off, turning 111

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and bending like a body builder, and counted my widdle owwies. The sore place on my ribs was probably only a bruise. If I had a tuning fork, I could test them, but going by memory this didn’t hurt sharply enough for the bones to be cracked. My arms, especially my forearms, were scraped up and spotted with impending bruises. The electric prod had left burns, but not as bad as I might have guessed. My hands had taken more damage than the rest of me put together. They hurt, but they ought to be half-crippled with pain. I wasn’t sure why they weren’t. Lingering endorphins? I picked up the blue slacks, pajama bottoms but with both a drawstring waist and beltloops. I shook them in hopes boxers, briefs, or anything underwear-like might fall out of the folds. No luck. Oh well. “Do you enjoy being fucked, Kendall?” How’s that for a direct approach? I grinned. Or 112

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tried. The good side of my face, now swollen, hurt to stretch. “It beats being fucked over.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “But?” He was perceptive. I’d have to watch what I said. But if I was any good at watching my mouth, I’d have skipped half the trouble in my life. And some of the fun. He was still watching me, his eyes as shiny as a blacktop on a rainy night. Waiting for an answer. “It depends.” I enjoy going through the dance steps of being seduced, even when I look at a guy and know within minutes we’re going to end up naked. And in the days before I’d hooked up with Turn, this guy would have everything that attracted me: strong hands, noticeably taut musculature, clean smell, low-pitched voice, direct gaze, lips with some color. The beard was different. I wanted to know how it felt. I bet he was hung, too. I’ve always imagined that bearded guys are really hung. 113

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But I never fuck a guy the first time we meet. The only time I’ve ever broken that rule was with a guy named Mau Mau, who’d ended up trying to insinuate a fist up my ass. That was the first fight I’d ever won outside of a gymnasium. “What does it depend on?” Translation: What do I have to do to fuck you? No, more like: What do I have to do to fuck you without a fight? Because if he didn’t mind a fight, he had all the blue uniforms he needed to hold me down for it. So had Father. Only Father had needed to establish he was macho enough to subdue me in front of his bully-boys, without their help. I needed an ally, if I wanted to maintain any hope of helping Turn, and I was looking at the only candidate. Did recruiting him mean I had to follow him through the dance steps of seducing me? Would that even work? Stupid question. He’d done everything but tell 114

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me to bend forward and brace. Okay, I’ll do what you want if it makes you more likely to do what I want. But what would be the psychologically correct way to communicate that? As opposed to communicating Ken is a butt-slut. Where psychotherapy foundered, my politeconversation training came to the fore: For pity’s sake, Kendall! Answer some other question, then! I circled back to his first question. “You look like a guy who likes to fuck.” He raised one brow. Wow. I never could do that. “Would a man have to be big and muscle-bound to catch your interest?” I focused on his strong, well-used hands. Clean nails. Then on his strongly-cut features. His full, lush mouth. I felt a stir down low, and encouraged it. These light-weight pantalons didn’t hide a thing. He noticed. His eyes were too black to show whether his pupils dilated, but his nostrils flared like a wolf scenting prey. 115

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“There’s more than one kind of strength,” I said carefully. “Plus, you might have noticed that big, hard muscle alone isn’t enough to do it for me.” They don’t come a lot bigger and harder than Father. My chubby wilted at the memory. But the man’s eyes crinkled even more. Any moment now he might actually smile. “So, then, what does it for you?” I hesitated. Looked down at where his hand loosely clasped the ankle propped on his knee. You have everything it takes, except you’re not Turn. “I have someone.” Fuck, that wasn’t in the script. Nor was his response. “Turner Scott.” I nodded. Confirmation of information might be valuable to him, but I wasn’t telling secrets if he already knew the facts. “Do you have his full devotion, and does he have yours?” No, he has Race. My face must have said more 116

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than I’d like, because he nodded. Great. He cocked his head. “I can see where you would be very beautiful. Is that why they cut up your face?” So much for seduction. “If you were trying to flatter me, you could do like everyone else and pretend you don’t see the scars.” “A scarred truth is more beautiful than the most polished lie.” “Sounds like a quote. Whose?” “If you were trying to flatter me, you could pretend you thought I was deep enough to come up with that myself.” You’re right. I should have thought of that. He’d thrown me off balance, though. “You are beautiful, Kendall.” And with that, we’d swum back to shallow water. I nodded, gratefully accepting the compliment. I’m young and healthy. I spend time every day working on my muscles. And I’m blond. Not golden like Mother. Washed out sandy blond, peculiarly 117

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like Dean and what showed in the old pics of Father. But blond enough to get comments. Even so, nobody had felt the need to call me beaut-y-ful until I got the right side of my face all carved up. My sister rolled her eyes when I’d pointed that out. Kenny, they said it behind your back! Saying something so obvious makes for lousy conversation. Except I’m pretty good at hearing what people say, even when they don’t expect me to, and that’s never what I heard being said behind my back. That youngest of yours is a little... graceful, isn’t he? Y’all got him taking dance classes, or what? I pulled on the blue shirt, wrestling it over my damp skin. “Racien is not beautiful.” He knew about Race too? I swallowed, and kept my eyes down to avoid revealing too much. Race had been about my age in the one pic I’d seen, and a reasonably broad spectrum of appreciation lets a 118

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person accept most healthy young men as beautiful. Race had a crooked nose and all, but that vividly happy expression would be enough to make him attractive, at the very least. If this guy knew Race’s name, I didn’t have to be afraid he’d try to interrogate it out of me. My sore face saved me from showing too much relief. I shrugged instead. “I look forward to meeting Race.” I looked forward to seeing what Turn saw in him. The photo Turn carried wasn’t all that clear, but it showed a man who laughed with all his face, and probably loved with all his soul. Then again, maybe I didn’t want to get close enough to be compared to him. The man put his feet flat on the floor. Expensive shoes. Polished to a mirror-shine. I bet they had steel toes. “Kneel to me, Kendall.” Father’s words, deliberately chosen. I didn’t think of refusing this time. I went down, sitting on 119

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my ankles to get a lower profile, right between his splayed thighs. He did smile, briefly. “Good boy. You do in fact understand the situation.” I focused on that mouth, perfectly Venetian red and bracketed with deep lines. “I understand jack shit. I know jack shit. I know you’re the boss, though, and sometimes that’s all a guy needs to know.” He set his hand on my shoulder, stroking my neck with his thumb. “You can speak plainly. I like that. Show me what else that mouth can do.” He was lean and compactly built. Opening his belt wasn’t a problem. He sighed and slid his butt forward a little to help me anyway. Which did make the fly easier to work. Cream silk boxers. I’d bought Turn silk boxers for Christmas. He’d stared a moment, then laughed so hard. Never would say why. I figured it was an old joke somewhere. I’d always kept my lovers in silk boxers—or tried—even though the delicate 120

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fabric did tend to get ripped apart in some of our more vigorous play sessions. Much as I’d love to blow him through the silk, he might not like the mess. So I nosed open his fly, and took a surreptitious sniff. Clean. Definitely a guy smell in there, warm and musky, but he had a regular acquaintance with soap and water. Didn’t mean he was healthy, but it improved the odds. Besides, I can’t blow a man who doesn’t smell clean. He swelled in my mouth, rapidly, like he’d been holding back. Like he could abruptly release what he’d pent up inside him. He’d taken a risk earlier, but he’d held back enough to shield himself from the ultimate rejection, like say if I’d been stupid enough to look at his package and say never mind, wee willie. He had a long shaft with Coke-bottle curves, slightly thickened for a couple of inches below the head before returning to about the same girth as the head. I thought about how those curves would feel 121

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pistoning into me at full throttle, and closed my eyes to savor it. “Eyes open, Kendall. Watch me.” Me covered a lot of ground, from my distance and angle. But I bet he meant eye contact. Oh, yeah. Onyx eyes watched me from under his lashes. His thumb continued to stroke the side of my neck and throat. His eyes held me. For a moment I sat staring up at him, his cock becoming as much a part of my aching mouth as my own tongue. His eyes crinkled at the corners. His mouth pursed. “Do it.” I suckled him, kneading his thighs with both hands, working the underside of his glans and shaft with my tongue, tilting my head to take the lipfriction mostly on the unbruised side of my face. I couldn’t feel much in the cheek and lip there, but I’d spent plenty of time learning to eat, and talk, and blow, as if nothing were wrong. 122

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His breath hissed between his barely parted lips, then grew harsh. His muscles clenched under my hands, holding back. I sucked harder, ignoring the protest from the bruised side of my face, working to break through the man’s rigid self-control. This was a fight I’d win, but why was he fighting at all? Didn’t he want a good, quick climax? One lean leg curled around me, his ankle-bone digging into the small of my back. His indolent expression remained, but only as a mask, a thin screen over a depth of intensity no one could gauge. I didn’t dare slide in a finger to touch his prostate. But when his dark-red lips parted for a faint, breathy noise, I did bring my hands to the tops of his thighs to press my thumbs right behind his balls. His face clenched, his eyes holding mine for another second as the first spasm rocked his body. Then his head went back, the cords of his throat and chest and upper arms standing out visibly, just as 123

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his inguinal tendons vibrated against my palms and the strongly male-tasting jism splashed across my tongue and throat. I swallowed hard, and didn’t choke. He relaxed in my mouth and under my hands. He stroked my hair with both hands as I swallowed the rest of his fluid and licked stray drops from my lip. This taste would stay with me a long time, I knew. A long, long time. He sighed deeply. “That was good. Put it away.” I tucked his cock back into his silk boxers, only slightly drool-marked, and worked his zipper back up. He stroked his thumb over my neck again. “You liked that.” Oh, yeah. Who wouldn’t? “Come here.” That was funny, with the taste of his cum in my mouth, but laughing hurt. 124

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Then he pulled me to sit on his lap, and I realized he meant to kiss me. I averted my face. “What’s wrong, Kendall?” He stroked the middle of my bottom lip with his thumb. I’m not much into kissing guys I didn’t know. I swallowed, and the pain gave me an answer. “The inside of my mouth is still bleeding.” Not really. The bleeding had stopped sometime during the blowjob. But if— Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck! I ‘d had a fluid exchange with an open blood pathway in my mouth. With a completely unknown man! He hesitated, visibly gauging the risk. But then he stroked my lip again. Right between the numb part and the sore part, in the part that tingled and in the part that felt really good. Much more of that would have me squirming. Again. “I’m healthy,” he whispered against my mouth. “Open to me.” 125

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I opened to him. He cupped my head with his hands. He was gentle, but touched every one of my teeth with his long, pointed tongue. I’ve never had a man take control of a kiss that way. To take control of me that way. By the time he lifted his head, I lay panting and limp in the crook of his arm. Except my dick. No limpness there. Not the least bit. He drew a fingertip from the center of my lip down my chin. “Your face is a mess.” Had we graduated to honesty now? That was fast. Last person who wanted to get all honest with me on the first screw had been that son of a bitch van Owen. I’d climbed off a beachfront balcony and down six floors to get away from him. Tore my hands to hell on the fake lava-rock. I’d been that scared. This guy, now, was scarier by an order of magnitude. 126

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Then again, I don’t scare as easily as I used to. He stroked the tenderness that took up the entire left side of my face. Then he stroked the scars on the numb side. That took the pressure out of my cock. Only Turn—and various medical people—had ever touched those scars. I’d had surgery after surgery, including fullthickness skin grafts, but while you can make a scar line smaller, you can’t make it disappear. People say the lines aren’t noticeable. But if they weren’t noticeable, who’d say anything? “Do you know why these men were never prosecuted, Kendall Turner?” That took the rest of the pressure out of my dick. I tried to sit up. “Nobody cared enough to find them.” He held me in place. “Someone cared.” Took a second to realize he was talking about Turn. Nobody else would even think of hunting those guys down. Their unstated fate dangled in front of me, a baited hook. 127

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I’d seen what Turn did to the guys who tried to blackmail me in high school. I could imagine him really letting go on the men who’d torn me apart, who’d laughed as I lay bleeding. I had to bite. “So why weren’t they prosecuted?” “The last of them, the one with the tiger-stripe tattoos, was used for shark chum.” Time shifted out from under me. I heard the laughter, tasted the blood. Rich boy, pretty blondie boy, and now his pussy face look like shark chum. The black guy’s gold-inset teeth glittered in the pitiless jail cell light. On his bottom lip, drying blood cracked with his smile. He licked the blood. My blood. Shark chum pussy. Shark chum pussy. The two white guys traded the line back and forth between them, like it was a middle school love-note nobody wanted to claim but everybody wanted to read. I looked helplessly at the glass wall between our cell and the day room, at the cameras there. Didn’t 128

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the cops care what happened here? The guy with the tiger tattoos kicked at my head, but I got my shoulder in the way. The follow-up kick cracked my face against the bedframe. Hands gripped me. Hard. Like pliers— “KT! I said come back to me!” The command brought me back. Shaking, sick, sweating, I looked up into his solid-black eyes. He held my face with his strong, steady hands. “You’re here. You survived it.” He kissed me again. It was like a shot of something wild, emptying my mind of thoughts and memories while filling me up with want. He cupped my balls through the loose fabric of the pantalons. I wanted to hump against his hand, but I waited for him to say something, to take the lead. He was the boss. He studied my face, which probably looked witless and needy. His hand, so warm, rubbed the 129

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underside of my straining cock through the cloth. Then he cupped my balls again. Possessively. “You neglected to shave while you were in the shower.” Shave? My balls? “I never shave there.” “You will with your next shower.” The certainty in his voice made it law. Of course I would. I couldn’t summon any resistance. And only one qualm. “Tell me you know where Turner Scott is, and that he’s okay.” “I know generally where he is, and he’s probably mostly okay. I’m spending large quantities of other people’s money to improve both situations.” Who are you? Some ex-lover of Turn’s? Maybe someone who didn’t want to be ex? Had he come before or after Race? I wouldn’t have guessed Turn would go through more than a couple of relationships. His emotions ran too deep to easily shift course. I focused my eyes on a dark red bottom lip. The angles of the man’s face were wrong for him. 130

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Undeniably balanced, and chosen for power. But... chosen. He’d had that face sculpted. “Does your face have numb spots from the surgery?” His eyes narrowed. “How do you know?” “I grew up among artists. I had drawing lessons from age five to seventeen. Your face is too symmetrical to be natural.” “Ah. Can your artist’s eye tell what I looked like before?” I shook my aching head. I’m no artist. I’m competent with pen, pencil, and brush, but nothing Mother said or did could give me the talent to trap real life in a flat surface. When he held me closer against him, I sat up. Now his eyes were on level with my jaw-line; he might take this body language the wrong way. But how could he have kept holding all my weight sprawled? “I have to be way too heavy to be leaning on your arm all this time.” He locked a fist in my hair and pulled. 131

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I could fight to maintain my balance, or fall against his arm. Didn’t feel like fighting. So I fell. His arm under my back felt solid as a bar of iron. I gave in and wiggled my butt to a more secure braced angle. “You don’t make the decisions about what my arms can hold.” His stern tone sounded... stagey? “Okay. I just thought—.” The lines at the corners of his dark eyes deepened. “You’re not heavy. You’re my lover.” I laughed, and it hurt, and he kissed me again. Fiercely, hungrily. That hurt too, but I couldn’t stop myself from leaning into him, stroking his tongue with the living side of mine and sucking on the tip of it. He pulled back from my face and pushed at my legs. “Get up. We are not doing this in a straightback chair in the bathroom.” This was going to be fucking. A blowjob was a 132

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blowjob, but fucking would be fucking a guy behind Turn’s back. “I need to—” My voice sounded weak, thin. I swallowed, and deepened it. “I came all this way to save Turn.” He didn’t laugh at me. He nodded seriously as he pushed me off his lap. “And so you did. They were planning an increasingly vigorous interrogation of him, but your father stopped them with a promise that hearing you scream would make Scott talk.” “He’s not my father!” I was Mother’s bastard, as Turn was Father’s. “Ah.” He opened a door to another atrium, or a nook of the first one. Water splashed, almost concealing the traffic noises. Farther away, dogs barked. “Did you know before tonight?” I’d found out this past fall, when I’d hacked an email. Puzzle pieces spun, and fell together. A surgically altered face plus a Jacksonville accent. Plus knowing too much about my personal history. And he’d called 133

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me KT, meaning he’d heard of me through Turn. Race. Had to be. Especially given the hints of jealousy, the eagerness to gauge exactly what I had to offer a man. How far into la-la land had I been over the last several minutes, to have puzzled this out so slowly? If I called him by name, I’d lose any advantage I might keep by letting him underestimate me. So I scowled. “How do you know about that?” He opened another door, and hit a switch to light up a deep-forest themed bedroom with a high ceiling and the biggest bed I’d ever seen, framed in polished six-inch-square beams. The room had two narrow doors, like to closets. The ceiling fan and array of stand-fans indicated the AC wasn’t very good in this room, which might mean it was pretty close to a sealed vault. I saw no obvious exit, except the way we’d come in. “Scott went to give blood for you, and was told your blood type is B. Scott’s an A, like his father. 134

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Your mother is also type A. Two people with type A blood do not have a child with type B.” That was almost an invitation to flat-out ask. Especially with a Turn-sized bed in front of me. Now behind, me, because he’d turned me and backed me up to it, and was unbuttoning my shirt from the bottom. I caught his hands. “Who are you, that Turn tells you that kind of thing?” He flashed another momentary smile. “What you don’t already know, you don’t need to know.”

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He gave me no time to react. He kissed me. Pushed me back onto the bed, which was futon-hard, and crawled atop me and kissed me like nothing I’d ever known. Teeth and coffee-flavored tongue. Lips now soft and now hard as any other muscle. Biting and licking and sucking. And fuck it hurt. And fuck—it felt so good. I flushed all over, burning up with want. With need. His cock thrust insistently at my solar plexus. I locked my legs about him, thrusting back. I’d never been this crazy to do it. I have to be crazy to want this. 136

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He had my shirt open. He shoved it back and down, so the sleeves pinned my arms. He bit my neck hard, evaded my attempt to return the favor, and bit my nipple. He kicked off his pants and underpants as I kicked off my pants. I have to be crazy to actually do this. Without warning, he lifted his head and slung his forehead into my bruised ribs. Ow! I interposed my shoulder between his head and my torso. “What the fuck? He studied me briefly. “Your ribs aren’t broken.” “I could have told you that! Ask next time!” He growled, slammed my knees wide apart, and pinned them with his elbows. “You don’t give the orders here, rubio.” Rubio, now? Where was the pure Florida English he’d spoken a minute ago? He bit the same bruise, harder. I yelled, twisting under him, not sure if I was more angry or more hurt or more fucking excited 137

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than I’d been in my life, and he thrust a greased thumb up my ass. I came, spurting viscous cream across his bloodstained shirt. He laughed, a slow deep chuckle just like Turn’s. I clutched his shirt, smelling my own cum, feeling cheated. It had ended too fast. Like a sneeze. “Where the fuck did you get lube?” “Just be happy I did, rubio.” He pumped the thumb a few times, as if to prove things  weren’t over and done with. He had a big knuckle. I pushed back, wiggling my butt encouragingly, and he jerked free. Not exactly what I’d wanted, unless he planned to replace it with something better. He flipped me over on my knees and chest. I tried to crawl forward to the center of the bed, which wasn’t easy with my arms pulled back and tangled in my shirt. Time to shed the shirt. He grabbed my shirt, and I thought he meant to 138

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help. Instead he ripped it up the spine to the shoulder yoke. He knotted it to bind my arms back, straining. Then he yanked my knees out from under me. I fell, jarring all my sore places, but instead of hurting, the pain jazzed through me. I kicked and wriggled more to see what he would do than to get loose. My sensitized cock scrubbed unbearably against the dark-green bedspread. Race kicked my feet apart and spread my cheeks. Slathered on more lube, cold enough to pucker my skin in goosebumps. At the first blunt, greased pressure on my hole I thrust back, swallowing him all at once. Fuck! The bedspread muffled my howl. That hurt, hurt, hurt. And I was coming again. Race withdrew, and speared into me. Over and over, countless times. Having already come once, he could last and last. So he pounded me recklessly, endlessly, fast and hard and deep and good. I thrashed helplessly under him, my cock still 139

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hard under me on the cum-wet bedspread. The pain twisted the pleasure, and the pleasure twisted the pain and they tangled so tight I didn’t know one from the other. Together they were putting a kink in my soul that would stay forever. Leave me marked with Race’s sign. Branded. His strong fingers dug into my hips, and his last thrust stuttered. Hot liquid jetted deep within me. I felt transcendent, awe-struck, on another plane. Yet in an odd way I felt more purely me, more intimately connected to every cell in my body than I had ever been. It was the runner’s high I’d heard of but never reached, the crack high I’d never dared try for. I couldn’t identify the colors I saw. “Wow.” He bit me, high in the middle of the back. “Ow! That fucking hurt!” He chuckled. So much for afterglow. I bucked him off. He lay on his side, my cum and Father’s blood staining his shirt, his gleaming cock draped 140

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lazily over his thigh, and he watched me. Like an entomologist with some new bug. Like a shrink with an unexpectedly interesting patient. I wriggled out of the knotted blue shirt while he watched me. Thank you, yoga. “What the fuck is it with you and biting?” “I like to bite. I like to leave marks.” No apology. Just fact. “Smug bastard. Don’t you know it hurts?” “Being born hurts, Kendall. Everything worthwhile hurts.” “I don’t like your philosophy.” I examined the shirt. It had the vertical rip up the middle of the back, but it was a shirt. I put it on and buttoned it up. I could tuck it in when I got my pants on. I grabbed the pants and shook them until the legs fell right-side-out. “What was worthwhile about that last bite?” “Thinking of your lover’s reaction.” I stopped dead, bent over with one foot in 141

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my pants. A weight like cold grease settled in my stomach. Turn. He’d marked me to hurt Turn. And I’d let him do it. “I don’t like you.” “You don’t have to, rubio.” He lay stretched across that big green bed, lean, lethal, languid. Completely comfortable. I took my foot out of the pants and went around the bed to the massive dresser. I didn’t limp. I worked very hard to walk as if I didn’t feel like I’d taken a jackhammer up my ass. I found bedding in the top drawer. The middle drawer had pantalons and shirts. The bottom drawer had boxers, thongs, and swim trunks. Stupid arrangement. Bedding should be in the larger bottom drawer. I grabbed two of the three pair of boxers. “Where’s the shitter?” He flipped a wave at one of the smaller doors. I took some pleasure in shutting a door between me and him. Any door would have done. Any opaque door. Room to do some calming exercises—where he couldn’t watch me—would have been perfect. But at 142

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least I had room to breathe. I breathed a long time. Kept losing my count, trying to hyperventilate. But I got it again, kept it. Kept it longer and longer until I was sure I was in control. When I came out, Race had gone. The bedspread had been straightened. Apart from what I wore, the only signs of adventure here were dampish spots of darker green, which smelled faintly of pine oil. I’d heard that in Latin cultures, a bedroom was a sanctum sanctorum, the ultimate in private space. You could be best friends with someone for years and never know what his bedroom looked like. Not only was I here, I was apparently abandoned here. I didn’t know where else to go, didn’t have anywhere else to go, didn’t know if trying to leave this room would get me locked up somewhere less pleasant. I paced, feeling weird. The other small door led to a closet, which was empty. I re-checked the drawers, and found precisely 143

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three of each item of clothing: small, medium, and large. This wasn’t Race’s bedroom, but a guestroom. No, a prison cell. I fought down the surge of panic. More like protective custody. That thought let me breathe. Neither the bedroom, the toilet, the closet, nor the non-toilet bathroom had a window, but beyond the bathroom was a... wasn’t it a library? Would I be allowed there? Given the rich but spare décor in the bedroom, surely the reading room would be considered part of this suite. And there was an atrium past the library. Open sky. I’d check the atrium later, after I’d convinced Race and his people that I was good at staying put. The library ceiling was a good twelve feet up, and the shelves went all the way. I ignored the ladder because the shelves looked sturdy enough to hold my weight. They did hold me. The upper shelves were largely empty—just some pre-Columbian stone and 144

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tile knicknacks. Toltec, Olmec, maybe some others. Not exactly my realm of expertise, but I had listened to fanatics rave enough to absorb a few details. I moved all the knickknacks off the shelf closest to the atrium door, distributing them with others that looked sort of like them. In a pinch, I could swarm up the shelves and hide on this one without knocking anything off. I wasn’t likely to use that hidey-hole, but like the cartoon said, ya nevah know. Especially the way things had been going since I’d found out my folks really are psychopathic serial killers, smugglers, and conspirators on an international scale. I remembered an old family portrait taken when my brother Dean graduated kindergarten. He stood there in his miniature academic robes, clutching his little diploma. Mother, pregnant with me, held my gap-toothed sister while Father, Grandfather, and Uncle Kendall beamed their identical, sinister smiles at one another. By the time I graduated 145

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kindergarten, Grandfather and my uncle were both dead. Now Father... Father. I gripped the edge of the shelf with both hands. Still didn’t have anything left to throw up, but my guts again tried to go through the motions. I worked my teeth until I was sure they weren’t closed on my tongue or the inner wall of my cheek, and clenched them to ride out the nausea. My jaws cramped, though, so I just stood there breathing by the numbers until the nausea eased. Guilt followed. How do I tell Mother? I knocked my forehead forcefully against the edge of the shelf. I don’t tell her anything. Somebody else can. Orient, Ken. Okay, yeah. I found a Nuevo Laredo newspaper dated Domingo, Sunday. This was Sunday evening? Under it was the Sunday paper for El Paso. El Paso was as far west as Texas went, I thought. Out in the west Texas town of El Paso… yeah. I tried to picture Laredo on a map, but all I knew was 146

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that it lay along the border and that Nuevo Laredo was on the other side. Here was a Tucson Spanishlanguage weekly, along with one for Nogales and Ahumada, Corpus Christi, and Houston. All of them in Spanish. And all over the place, giving me no fix on where I was. Except that drive had taken me a long way from Tucson, and a long way past El Paso too. Fuck ‘em. I could piece out what the articles said if I worked at it, but right now I didn’t have the energy. I found a Canadian book on Zapotec culture in Oaxaca, which looked beautifully cool and mountainous in the illustrations, and curled up to read. About thirty pages later, Race came striding in from the atrium, his sharp eyes sparkling and his lips pursed. He stopped, and looked at me. I looked back, since I didn’t dare ignore him. He nodded. “Show time.” 147

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Meaning what? I stood, in case he was planning on attacking me. He held me with his eyes, and backed up against a case of leather-bound books. The door opened beside me. Race he cut his eyes to the door. “Merciful God.” Turn! I whipped around to see him before I could think. Then thought about showing too much, because Race was watching. Too late. But Turn! Alive! Until that instant I hadn’t let myself think of him not being alive. But he was alive! My eyes stung. I had to blink to clear my vision. He came stiffly to me. “Merciful God in His heavenly mansions.” His top lip had scabbed over in the middle, and his double black eyes said his nose had been popped hard, whether it had broken or not. He still wore the white dress shirt he’d worn to the office Friday morning, though it was filthy, minus a few buttons, 148

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and gaping open at one sleeve seam to show his undershirt and a peek of body hair. Alive. His bruised eyes flicked to Race, and settled back on me. That look said if we were alone, he’d be all over me. Then his gaze clouded, and returned to Race. Race smiled thinly. “Don’t be too surprised.” Turn’s thudding pulse sped up, and his voice came as a hoarse whisper. “Race?” “I was wondering if you remembered I existed.” Turn looked like a kid who’s been shown a cupcake he can’t touch. I reached up automatically, but dropped my hand and stepped aside. Couldn’t stand the thought he’d shrug me off to go to another man. Even to Race. He didn’t. He hooked an arm around me. “You saved KT? That was your doing? If only I’d known you were on it. I wouldn’t have been so sick—” “With him I just picked up the pieces. Getting 149

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you away from my partners was the difficult part.” Turn reached for him, grinning so broadly the scabbed place on his lip split open. Race stepped away from the two of us. “Y’all will want to clean up before dinner. KT can scrub your back this time.” Turn hesitated. “KT’s had a shower. His hair isn’t completely dry yet.” Race looked down his handsome nose at Turn— not an easy task, given their respective heights. He was more Turner than I was. “He’s been busy since then, and could use another cleaning.” Turn’s arm tightened. Then he pulled at my ripped shirt, untucking it, and uncovered my back. He didn’t say anything. I stared at our overlapping shadows on a wall of book spines. What could I say that wouldn’t make things worse? Turn whirled and lunged at Race, cocking back his fist. 150

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Race ducked the punch, his own hands fisting. I jerked about and dove between them, hands open and high. Race was our ticket home. Turn had to see that. I kept the scarred side of my face to Race. Turn wouldn’t hit me, and if Race did, it wouldn’t hurt so bad on that side. Turn’s face, the boiling fury there, twisted my stomach. “Move aside, KT.” I didn’t. And I didn’t let them sidestep me. Race had his fists up. His dark eyes blazed with devil fire and his face twisted with rage. I put my fingertips on Turn’s shoulder, to keep track of where he was, and closed my eyes. If I saw Race swinging at me, I’d block, and that would be just as much a fight as if Turn had hit him first. Turn yanked me up against his big, solid body, and pivoted half-away from Race. Burly arms held me safe, safer than I’d been in too long. His growl vibrated at my throat. “How could you?” Because I was scared, and alone, and he’s— 151

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But Race came around and mashed himself against my back. “How could you? What happened to the promises? The years we had?” Turn’s face pushed past my shoulder. The two of them kissed behind my head, teeth clicking, with me pressed like so much lunchmeat between them. Cocks hardened against me, front and back. Turn moaned, the moan I’d thought was the noise I pulled out of him. Splinters jabbed through me, cutting me to pieces inside. I tried to slip out from between the lovers, let them have at it. They both held me in place. Turn caught the back of my head in one big hand and pulled my sore face into a kiss, gentle and probing, that melted the splinters of anxiety. Race’s lips and teeth scraped lightly along my neck. He kissed the bite mark there. Turn’s mouth left my mouth, touched Race’s cheek, pushed him off the bite, and licked it 152

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soothingly. Race put teeth on Turn’s neck, then looked up at me. I saw heat in his eyes. Devilment, but honest heat, too. “Look the other way, rubio.” I obeyed. Race’s mouth came around to meet mine, demanding but not so hard as before. Not hurting. My cock throbbed against Turn, who rolled his hips, scrubbing his cock against the base of mine. I clutched fistfuls of his shirt, and whimpered into Race’s mouth. Turn took a deep, shuddering breath. “Tell me you have rubbers.” “I’m clean, Scotty, and unless you’ve—” “I had to prove my manhood. It’s rubbers for everything until I can get tested.” I thought of my two loose teeth, the split cheek inside my mouth. But I’d taken chances before. Turn held me tighter, so I had to work to breathe. “Plus, I don’t know what Senior gave KT.” 153

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Whoa—”Father didn’t do me.” Turn’s heart stopped. It started again, slow thuds against my chest. “They made me listen to it, KT. I heard you saying no. I heard the whole—” “You heard KT beating Senior to a bloody pulp. When Senior used the cattle prod, it was bad, but then KT went berserk. If we could bring out that effect in the arena, we’d make a fortune.” Turn clamped tighter on me, too much for my bruised rib. I made a noise. He loosened his grip immediately. “Why don’t you have an ice pack on your face? Where else did he hurt you?” That was Turn, thinking of how to take care of me when he looked at least as bad-off. I snuggled my abused face into where his meaty neck merged with his bull-strong shoulders. He reeked of metallic fear-sweat and stale tobacco smoke, alien smells for him, but that nook still fit my face perfectly. He held me as if I were 154

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precious, and in that moment I was. But he had to be miserable, knowing he wasn’t clean. I looked at Race, his onyx eyes measuring us, gauging, calculating—I couldn’t guess what. I cleared my throat, which was still scratchy. “Will that shower stall fit all of us at once?” Race grasped a fistful of my hair and another fistful of Turn’s. “Oh, yes.” The corners of his dark eyes crinkled deeply. “I’ll get the straight razor.” Turn stiffened. “No!” Race smiled a fake smile. His eyes widened, dark mirrors, reflecting my face and Turn’s together, and his nostrils flared. “Oh, yes. ··· Turn shaved me, face and neck and crotch and ass. I had quite a lot to say about it, all under my breath, but Race had his way. He also had an antique silver straight-razor, with my name engraved on it. 155

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I had no clue how to use a straight razor. Nor was I sure I wanted to know how Turn had learned his technique. But Turn did know what he was doing, or he improvised perfectly. He soaped me up with a cedarscented soap, and had me sit on Race’s lap (Race had commandeered the sitting shelf) and set a steaming towel in my crotch while he stropped the blade. Then he rinsed me, soaped me again, and knelt in front of me while I rested one foot on his braced knee. He pulled at my scrotum steadily, warning me before he made any twist or shift, and swore with the same steadiness. I stopped talking at the first cold touch of steel. Didn’t want to distract him. Turn’s left foot had five blackened and broken toenails. Two toes had swollen to grotesque proportions. He hadn’t said a word about them. Nor had he got them by kicking a brick wall; the cracks were from base to tip, not from side to side. 156

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I remembered when my toenails came off, how bad the toes had hurt and how long those nails had taken to grow back properly. I wanted to gut whoever had done that to him. But if Race was around, maybe I wasn’t the one who had a right to exact retribution. Race held me up from behind, kept me from slipping or from changing my mind. He folded my arms in front of me, resting his callused hand on my crossed wrists as a reminder to keep them high, out of Turn’s way. His other hand moved up and down my lats, abs, and flanks. He occasionally fingered Turn’s short black hair. Turn would snarl, and Race would laugh. Race had arranged the lighting so the glass walls of the shower enclosure acted as mirrors. I had seen Egyptian wall-carvings of teenagers being circumcised from this position. The comparison did nothing for my comfort level. The icy blade whispered over my balls, which kept pulling on their 157

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internal cords and trying to crawl up inside me. Turn and Race both kept saying this would go faster if I would just relax. Wasn’t going to happen. I trusted Turn with a blade. Really, I did. But these were my nuts, and I was fond of them. “This is going to itch like hell as it grows back,” Turn muttered darkly. “Unless he keeps them shaved.” Race pinched my nipple. “Stop making him jump!” I didn’t say anything. My balls pulled all the way back to my spine and up to my navel. I couldn’t keep whining about that or about the risk of getting sliced down there. And right now nothing else was worth talking about. Turn shifted position, and flinched. He still hadn’t said a word about his toes. Now I had a good view of the sole of that foot, of the jaguar-spots of blisters dotting it. The spots had turned white in the 158

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water. Burns. Second degree. Burns like that had put me on my knees, crawling to the bathroom. Slick scars still showed on a couple of toes. I don’t remember how I got them. The family said I’d done it to myself, while tripping on acid, and they’d shipped me off to yet another clinic. Not a bad clinic, either; I’d had a private bathroom to crawl to. Remembering any more than that—the crawling—was the sort of thing that gave me sweating nightmares. Sometimes I caught a surprise echo, I won’t tell, let me go—I won’t tell! like a glimpsed reflection in a shard of glass. I had learned to back away, breathing deeply, from such memories. Trying to make sense of them tended to send me running to the arms of Johnny Walker. I saw Turn’s blistered foot manga-style, so I gave him waist-length glossy black hair and a Ronin’s indestructible face. I breathed in a long slow breath, held it, and let it out just as slowly. The manga drawing morphed, 159

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breath by breath, into what I accepted as standard reality. Race had pulled a miracle, saving us. We would have to pay for the rescue. I didn’t know how much we’d have to do to pay for it, though, and I didn’t know if Turn would be willing to pay. He hadn’t come into the family until he was eleven, almost twelve. He wasn’t as practical as I’d learned to be. Turn stood, stretching so I heard his spine crackle, and walked, rock steady on those burned feet, to set the razor on the soap shelf. “Done. Give us some more running water, would you?” “Surely.” Released, my arms fell heavily. The spray hit from three directions, one a fine stinging spray, one pulsing and hot, one with gentle drops as big as hot tears. Turn angled me to face the gentle raindrops, and massaged cedar soap over my shoulders. Turner Scott, my stone wall. What they’d done to him, what they’d do again if we didn’t get out of here, had to 160

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be worse than shaved balls. “Relax, KT. It’s over.” The shaving was. Race looked far from satisfied. I constructed a detailed manga-style image of that polished-looking skin being waxed. Involuntarily. By experts. Sadistic experts. He didn’t have much body hair, but when my mental image ripped clean his crack, I felt a whole lot better. “Look-a-here, look-a-here. Our niño’s balls have dropped.” “Knock it off, Race.” “You don’t think I’m going to go through all this trouble and not get some fun out of it, do you?” “Right. Are you sure your name isn’t Turner?” “Bite your tongue.” “Bite it for me?” Fuck. This was old, familiar banter to them. Race stretched up, sliding his soapy body across mine, to reach Turn’s face. “Any time.” I couldn’t take any more. I opened the glass door 161

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and stepped out into the cold room. I could towel off the soap better than I could take being the hairless baby in a Mexican hentai version of baby-makesthree. I was bald from navel to ass to toes. Fuck. I had more hair than this when I swam the Ironman. The clench in the shower had broken up by the time I finished drying. Race had a chubby, which was impressive considering how he’d gone to town with me twice this evening. What caught my attention was that Turn was only half-pumped himself. Okay, was the pain from his foot interfering with the hydraulics? No, he’d sported a randy horn-up when we’d all three been pressed together. Or he was thinking too much. If any man on earth could think himself out of a hard-on, Turner Scott was the man. He and Race talked quietly as they dried off. Interesting. Turn always dried me, and loved me drying him. They seemed to be making a point of ignoring one another’s breathtaking bods. 162

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Turn nuzzled the bruised side of my face. “Any second now they’ll be delivering you a monkey-suit. Do it up right, please? Race is taking me to another room to dress.” I will not be jealous. I will not be jealous. I don’t have any room to be jealous. Race laughed at me. “Down, Simba. We have only a few minutes until dinner, and have to spend part of that time spraying a can of numb-it on his foot. I need much more than a few minutes to savor him properly.” I will not be jealous. Turn whispered against my neck. “Hold it together, KT. It’ll be okay.” Easy for you to say. Both of us want you.

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They sent me a sharp suit, with black tie and cufflinks, for dinner. The tie was long enough to drape properly even when tied in a full Windsor. I hoped they’d remember to give Turn an extra-long tie. His neck takes up a lot of tie length. I’d had fun adjusting his tie when we went out to dinner at a nice place on the beach. And then a pair of nicelooking blue-haired retirees had spoiled the evening by saying, so kindly, that they would pray for the two of us. Turn and one of the blue-uniform guys came in just as I finished combing my hair. 164

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He smiled when he saw me. In his bruised gray eyes I saw my return smile. He was alive, I was alive, and we were together. Things could be a whole lot worse. His suit fit quite well, and his hair was perfect. Even the tie seemed custom-made to his neck, his torso, his hammered-steel eyes. Of course. Race would know Turn’s size and coloration. How long had that suit hung here, waiting for Turn to come fill it? I shrugged into my dinner jacket. Turn helped at the shoulders and collar. “It’s gonna be okay, KT. Really.” He touched my arm, which is what he’d do if we’d gone to the movies or something and had to walk by some cops on the way out to the car. Was this a warning to treat the blue-uniform like a cop? Like I needed a warning? Turn thought I was scared. I didn’t want to say I was jealous instead. So I made sure the guys at the 165

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door couldn’t see my face and stuck out my tongue at him, curling it in the way that always makes him laugh. He didn’t laugh, but he grinned. The guy in blue led us through the atrium and through an archway half-hidden in the bougainvillea to a larger courtyard studded with topiary rosemaries and chinotto, potted hibiscus with their blooms closed for the night, and a trio of trellised orchids in the kind of arched nook you’d expect to see built around a blue-cloaked statue of the Virgin. A massive wood-beam door on the other side opened to a parlor, or maybe an airlock. The door on the other side shut just as we came through, but I saw a streetlight flash across a windshield, and smelled the exhaust. There. The street was there. I mentally backtracked, did an anime-style zoom-out so I could map the areas I knew, and put in the two doors I’d seen lead out to the streets. 166

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Turn was being greeted with rough bonhomie mixed with heavy doses of wariness and contempt. He nodded minimally, grimly, his face a robot-mask with steel eyeballs. To the left, at a bar, two young men in ironed versions of the universal blue pajamas poured squat glasses of tequila and whiskey. A room divider behind them looked like it was only about a foot away from the wall. A screen, then, not a divider. What’s behind that? One of the bartenders looked vaguely familiar. I caught his eye. “¿Hay aguas frescas, por favor?” “Sí, como no.” He half-bowed, and ducked behind the room divider. A hand fell on my shoulder. I whipped around and put the Turner glare on the man attached to the hand. He was chin-high to me, built like a gorilla. He bristled with punk belligerence. Get back, gorilla! Didn’t look like he had the sense to back off, even 167

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under the Turner Glare, so I twisted out of contact. He moved back into my space, crowding me against the bar. “You and Race had the hottest mouth sex anyone around here has seen in a long time. Have you considered the advantages of sharing a little of that? I could send you home in royal style.” Anyone around here has seen...Fuck. The bathroom was bugged. A camera, if not a cameraphone. Did Race know? The gorilla’s face matched his diction; he was a tough who’d made it good, clawed his way to within sight of the top of the pile. This was as far as he’d ever get. If he challenged Race directly, instead of through me, he would be dog-meat by morning. Did Race know we were being watched? How could he not, if the results were openly discussed? Gorilla had spoken to me in English, I realized belatedly. Excellent English. I couldn’t match it in Spanish, so I stuck with English myself. “Since I intend to be home shortly, whether or not in royal 168

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style, I am in no position to be generous or possessive with Race’s sexual favors. You should ask him, if you want so badly to suck his dick.” For a moment he looked frozen, like he was sure of some mistranslation. I smiled. He swung at me, openhanded. I leaned just enough to let his hand whistle by, and kept smiling. With a couple years of practice in pretty much any martial art, a guy who’s only out to dodge can make an attacker look mighty stupid. I glanced over his shoulder to see how Turn was enjoying the show. Turn glared at me, his mouth a flat line. He moved his fingers, the gesture that when I was a kid meant “take a fall.” Meant winning right now— or even holding my own—wasn’t worth it. Meant however bad I got messed with, he’d make sure I was more than even shortly. Fuck. And now I had two fists, not slaps, coming 169

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at me. I clenched my abdominals to shield my internal organs, but stood still for the head shot. His fist struck like a hammer. All my muscles liquefied. Everything—his face and the interested sea of faces behind him—went out of focus. His other fist punched just above my belt. I folded forward, over his hand, and fell to my knees. I didn’t vomit. I didn’t vomit. I didn’t vomit. But I couldn’t breathe. Every part of me hurt. I stayed half under the shelter of the bar. In the room, slacks and shoes shuffled. Taunting voices and angry voices rose. And fell. Eventually, I could take little hiccupy breaths. “Get up, hermano.” Turn. Speaking through clenched teeth. I got my knees and then my feet under me, and I managed to stand out from under the bar. His broad back shielded me from the rest of them. I wanted to take fistfuls of his coattails, but that’s what a little 170

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kid would do. Six feet away, the guy who’d hit me lay on the floor, staring and blinking in a puddle of puke. I guess that made it better. A little. “With your permission, sirs, allow me to introduce myself.” Turn’s crisp, angry Spanish cracked through the noise, killing it instantly. “I am Turner Scott, eldest son of Karl Turner. And this is Kendall Turner, youngest of the family. Being the youngest, Kendall is under my arm. He does not speak on behalf of the Turner family. That’s my job.” That was cleverly done, and in classier Spanish than I’d have been able to manage. Even though it left me with a full measure of resentment and a full measure of relief diced up together. Now I could tag along behind him like any kid brother who can’t yet wipe his own nose, and refer any questions or comments to the newly declared paterfamilias. And if anyone here had seen any unbrotherly intimacy in Race’s guest suite and wanted to make 171

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something of it, they could take that little thing up with Turn. To the man who looked and sounded exactly like a darker version of his father. I made a decision to let the relief win. I took a wet hand-towel from the narrow-eyed bartender to wipe my hands and face. Didn’t have to look around to feel Turn hovering protectively, two short steps away. When I did see him, I didn’t have to look past his white knuckles to know how pissed he was. Probably, he’d thought the asshole was just going to slap me. If Turn knew how to disjoint his leg to kick his own ass, he’d be doing it now. I guess that made it better too. Somehow. My guts hurt from the root of my tongue to my shaven balls. The door at the end of the room opened, and feminine laughter tinkled like a piano arpeggio. Practiced laughs. Pretty, non-wrinkle-inducing laughs like Mother had taught my sister. Which might have something to do with my sister moving 172

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700 miles away as soon as she had a job that would allow it. It wasn’t because I didn’t treat her right. Well, mostly I treated her right. When she wasn’t screwing with me. Race appeared in front of me. I declined to look up from my hand-towel. He spoke to Turn. “We will mingle with the ladies for a minute or two, then I will escort my wife to one end of the table. You sit to her left. She speaks little Spanish and no English. Kendall may sit to your left. The ladies will probably cluster around you. Don’t let them bully Julieta too much. I will sit at the other end.” At one of Mother’s dinners, that arrangement would mean Turn was the guest of honor and I was to be treated as his date. Not exactly the hermano image. Race was playing a more complex game than I could keep track of. Turn had gotten stuck on a more basic level. “Your wife?” 173

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··· I sipped my soup and listened to four harridans explain to Race’s wife what a pregnant lady should be eating. A waiter refilled my glass with another frosty green drink, honeydew with ginger and a touch of mint. Julieta drank the same, while the other three women took red wine. Julieta wore a wide, blank smile and a faintly trapped look. She was Indio, and so small I wouldn’t have been able to see her on the other side of Turn’s bulk if I’d sat beside him as directed. However, a hawk-faced lady had muscled in between me and Turn, so I’d gone to take up position on her other hand—where I’d again been muscled aside, this time by a lean and elegant matriarch type. I’ve been elbowed aside by world-class bitches. These women were way too civilized to count among the best. Maybe that’s why I let them win. That or I just didn’t give a shit about the success 174

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of Race’s arcane gamesmanship. When the soup course was cleared, I looked at the great hunks of rare beefsteak being distributed. The very thought of chewing through a pound or more of bloody muscle made my face ache and my stomach clench. I waved mine away and asked quietly for fish, or tortillas with guacamole. Julieta’s mouth tightened ever so slightly. I got a flash of my sister. During her first pregnancy, she was all: Kenny, I would kill for a grouper sandwich! I brought her two or three a week. But during her second pregnancy, a whisper of fisssh could stop her in mid-rant and send her scurrying for the nearest toilet. Once, after I’d overheard her snitching on me, I’d put an open sardine can under the driver’s seat of her Corvette. The results had not been subtle. I beckoned the waiter back. “No fish, por favor.” And I set my peripheral vision on Julieta. Maybe she did understand just enough Spanish to catch my 175

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mention of the fish, or maybe she understood a lot more than she let on. The other women fussed over her. When she pushed her steak aside to eat her grilled vegetables, the lean matriarch between us brandished a forkful of blood-rare steak at her. Julieta recoiled, her mouth white-rimmed and pinched tight. I elbowed my brimming glass of wine into the matriarch’s plate, hard enough to splash a wave of wine-thinned cow’s blood onto her silk dress. What can I say? I don’t like bullies. Or wine. Apologizing profusely, pretending I didn’t understand any of the names she called me (or my mother—although some of those were amusingly accurate) I tried to help the waiter clean her up. I took care to smear the staining grease far and wide. Behind me, I heard jocular tones among Race and the men. Things settled down, all but my seatmate’s 176

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temper. She got a new plate with what had probably been my steak, while I got a nice plate of guacamole and scrambled eggs. The waiter whispered that a sweet potato would be ready in about fifteen minutes. I thanked the waiter. I didn’t really feel like eating much of anything, with my jaw and my stomach both talking to me, but it was a nice thought. A little belatedly, remembering that gracias was only technically sufficient, I added muy amable. He threw a smile back at me, probably amused by my pronunciation. Hey, I can’t be the only one who can understand a lot more than I can say. The matriarchs started back in on Julieta then, saying she needed to eat plenty of meat so her baby would grow up tall like Race instead of being a runty Indio like her. I saw a flash of something besides confusion. Something hidden in a blink of time. She smiled 177

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helplessly and shook her head. So she was playing a role, and I didn’t know how that affected me, or my business. I glanced at Turn, but he was listening to the men in the other direction. I hadn’t heard a word of what the men were going on about. Turn murmured that he was an accountant and that I (he jutted his chin at me) was a computer software expert. The men looked at me appraisingly. The one who’d hit me nodded fractionally. I didn’t nod back. Turn is an accountant. Knowing him, I’d have to guess he’s a good one. My software expertise, however, consists primarily of knowing how to recruit real experts on short notice. I’ve furnished beer and pizza for a hack-this party, and have been known to broker the occasional quarter ounce for a special job. I’m not a member of the clique, but they put up with me. I haven’t advertised my knack for sussing out 178

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passwords. Decryption software usually slogs along for hours or days to find a password. If I know the person who picked the password, I might get lucky on the second or third guess. Yeah, I get antsy when condescended to. Especially when, in the same breath, someone mentions a need for exactly what I can do. But I keep my mouth shut. The alternative would be getting asked—or coerced—to open my friends’ locks. I’d rather be condescended to. The waiter brought me another glass of wine. Like I really needed another drink in this lifetime. “Agua fresca, por favor.” Racien’s voice carried. “There’s tequila if you prefer, Kendall.” No thanks, I’ve had plenty. The line had become automatic. I smiled as much as my swollen mouth allowed and shook my head (gently, to keep from sloshing my brain against the spiked inside of my skull) instead of saying it out loud. I took the stem 179

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of the wineglass in my fingertips, admiring the way the light refracted through the liquid. One of the men, with a squat tequila glass in his hand and a sliver of grilled onion plastered to his mustache, showed off his bad teeth. “The blondie drinks like a woman.” “Well, I don’t drink like a dog-licking naco dickhead.” Everybody froze. Fuck. I said that out loud. He lunged over the table, Bowie knife in hand, dishes spinning and clattering under him. I shoved my seat back, falling to get out of range just as Turn, slit-eyed and snarling, dove across the table to intercept the dickhead. Bam! Gunfire. It overwhelmed the sound of my chair hitting the tile. I rolled sideways under the table, among the ladies’ legs. Three of the women joined me in a jostling mass of elbows and fleshy padding. 180

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At the same time, a plate fell. Guacamole spattered and silverware clattered. I shifted position, and slid the steak knife up my sleeve. Say all you want about taking a knife to a gunfight, it beats showing up barehanded. Red drops fell from the tablecloth, now sopping wet exactly where I’d been sitting. I heard the drops splash on the tile floor. Nobody seemed to be breathing. Certainly, no one had spoken since the gunfire. Not gunfire. Gunshot. Singular. The drops became a thin trickle. At least a yard of the cloth was now brilliant red. Not Turn. Not Turn. Not Turn. Turn can’t be shot. “I could have handled him,” Turn growled. Someone laughed. “Shot him through the heart. Ass-first.” Race laughed too. “Sí claro. We all know Juarez was a complete asshole, after all.” Everyone laughed, it sounded like. 181

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I put my head on my knees, and held back the dizzy relief. Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Julieta pushed back her chair and stepped back from the table. Her voice rose, clearly giving orders in her language. The secondary waiter was indio. Stood to reason he’d understand the lady of the house. I looked down the aisle of men’s shins and knees—none of the men had dived under the table. Not a macho thing to do. Only Race had stood, and now he sat. Race had to have been the one who’d fired that one shot. If Race hadn’t fired, he would have commented by now. Turn rolled off the table and crouched beside it. “It is safe to come out now, Ladies.” He looked at me. “Okay, KT?” The ladies blocked my view of him; they were all crawling toward Julieta to avoid the drippage on my side and Turn opposite me. Past the last butt I saw 182

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him. He had blood and soupy stuff all over his face and head. Fuck. Now I had to fight not to throw up. I put my head down again. “Cover the leftovers if you don’t want me to puke on them.” “Good idea.” “Wipe your face, too.” Right then, the waiters and a third guy in blue arrived. They bundled the tablecloth around everything on it, and lugged the clanking, thumping, clattering, dripping mass out through the kitchen door. They weren’t going to know I still had my knife, even if they’d been instructed to keep an eye out for anyone palming the silver. Two other guys in blue brought a big red bucket full of steaming water and an armload of towels and rags. My nieces had a bucket just like that for their stuffed animals and MLPs. I removed myself from under the table, looking away from Turn. I was beginning to feel like an 183

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idiot. Blowing chunks would be worse, though. Turn went to kneel by the bucket and dunked his head and shoulders in it, jacket and tie and all. Two of the men laughed as Turn went through the motions of shampooing his hair. Like me, washing Father’s blood out of my hair. Except Turn could still say he’d never killed anyone. I couldn’t. Race had said...no, Race had insinuated that Turn had killed men over me. All he’d said was that Turn had helped dispose of one of the bodies. I looked at Race. He didn’t look at all unhappy. A gruffly respectful voice referred to Don Racien just then. Yes, he’d become Don Racien with one pull of the trigger. He’d needed to consolidate his control with a demonstration of ruthless lethality. I’d provided a dramatic opportunity. Son of a bitch owed me. And he owed Turn, especially Turn. Turn needed 184

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to take the gamma globulin shots now, in case the naco dogfucker had had hepatitis. No, wait. If Race had killed the men who attacked me, then Turn and I both owed him. This scene wasn’t enough to balance out that debt. My head hurt. When the men in blue commenced mopping the table, Race laughed harshly and said something I couldn’t follow. Then he bowed. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, come with me. We will have dessert and coffee by the fountain.” I offered my arm to Julieta as a signal the party was on the move. She smiled stiffly and took it. Probably working hard at containing her own nausea. Or maybe she’d understood enough Spanish to know I’d given Race his excuse to ruin her party. Except that, by Race’s terms, and for all I knew hers too, I had made the party. The lady’s pulse was a little fast, a little hard, but 185

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it settled immediately when she took a deep breath and straightened her spine. She did have spine. My mother would love you, Doña Julieta, or she would destroy you. Then again, Mother might do both. ··· I was dozing against a wall beside a kumquat when Race said he would have someone see me to my room. I came fully awake, but kept myself plastered to that wall. Turn answered him. “I can’t leave him alone, Race. He’ll be scared.” “You sound like you’re talking about a little kid.” “His fears aren’t standard. Yours wouldn’t be either, if you’d been raised by those psychotics.” “They raised you. You aren’t twisted.” “My mother protected me until they disappeared her. Nobody protected KT. Hell, to leave a little kid 186

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trapped and alone with his finger in a vise just so nobody will believe what he says about what he and his daddy have been up to?” What I’d been doing that long-ago day was helping Father print $50 bills. Nobody believed that, though. No more than they believed Father was the one who’d crushed my finger, and had he’d left me there screaming. How typical that Turn believed. Though I don’t remember telling him. I guess he could have gotten the story from my psych reports. He thought I was twisted. How romantic. “Okay, it’s a big bed. I’ve had my fill of his ass, but maybe watching you do him will whet my appetite. You’re more my type, after all. And I’ve been waiting for you, lover, for a long, long time.” “You sure your place isn’t bugged? They won’t think something of two brothers going at it?” “I’d give five to three odds that every man here tonight has fucked his little brother at least once.” 187

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How charming. “Race...” “You want to fuck in front of him, or you want a three-way?” Speaking of romantic. “Racien?” Julieta. “Here, mi vida.” Race’s voice changed, gentled the way Turn’s did with me. You catching that, Turn? Not just calling her “my life.” The tone. You are hearing that, right? Fuck. Schadenfreud again. Turn’s good to me. Where do I get off wishing misery on him? If I opened my eyes, I might get an eyeful. But one of the tricks to not being noticed is not looking at the person you’re interested in. Couldn’t get a reading on their exact position, given the bush halfsurrounding my head and the wall behind me, so I didn’t dare open my eyes at all. Limping steps approached me. “KT, wake up.” I stretched my neck a few ways and smiled into 188

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his face. “Hey, tequila-breath.” He smiled tiredly. “I guess that beats dog-breath.” The lines went deep in his face. He didn’t have the familiar broomstick-up-the-ass erect spine. He looked like a man who’d been tortured. I stretched all over, slowly, the way I do to stop his oatmeal spoon in mid-air so he can focus all his attention on me. “Is it time we all said goodnight? You didn’t drink enough to affect your prowess, I hope?” He rubbed his face with the back of his hand. “Right. Like I need tequila to impair my prowess.” So much for distraction. “Your foot’s really hurting, isn’t it?” “It reminds me I’m alive.” He straightened his back. “I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all. What about you?” “Same.” “I bet you aren’t going to be doing your stretches in the dawn after a night like this.” 189

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“Watch me.” That got a real grin. Turn did like watching me. The dressed-up thugs were leaving with their wives. Race and Julieta saw them off with effusively affectionate gestures. When the door shut, Race’s shoulders dropped, then rolled. He smiled at Julieta. “If I never live to see another sunrise, I will die happy with your smile in my dreams.” She smiled, her heart in her eyes. That was an awfully complex compliment to give someone who barely grasped Spanish. She murmured something, haltingly, that I couldn’t catch. Race kissed her knuckles. “No one will ever take the place of you, mi vida.” “Damn,” Turn whispered in my hair. “I wish I could hear him.” “Sweet nothings,” I muttered. She gave us a troubled look, then put on a false 190

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smile, and drifted belly-first to the doorway. I hoped she had an elevator. She had to, didn’t she, to be that far along and be expected to come and go from the third floor? Race settled his eyes on Turn, and jerked his chin toward the door to the green-room suite I’d been stuck in earlier. Heh heh. Stuck. Meee so funneeee. I followed Race. Turn followed me. “Orient yourselves,” Race said, as Turn closed the door behind us. The lights went out, leaving utter blackness. Silent, but for our breathing. “It’s okay,” Turn whispered, his breath warm on the back of my neck. “I’d rather you said that only when it was true.” Race crossed the library, then the bathroom, and entered the bedroom. I took Turn’s hand and led him in Race’s wake. I have better ears than he does, and had spent enough 191

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time in these rooms to get some feel for them. A fan kicked on. Then the others together. “Come to bed,” Race invited, his voice rough and low, barely audible. Ah. He had the fans to glitch any audio bugs. Absolute darkness to render any cameras useless. The cameras, not any cameras. He’d filmed me. I spoke clearly enough to be heard over the moving air. “Where do you hide the cameras, Race? Besides the one by the shower?” “Three by the shower. Four around the bed. Two at the dresser mirror. Angles matter, you know.” Not a scrap of pretense he didn’t get my meaning. Fucker. “Hold it together,” Turn whispered into my hair. At least he wasn’t saying it was okay. We three undressed in the dark. Lips brushed my neck, my collarbones. Exhaled gently over my ear. Turn was the big one with the body hair. Race had much more my size, and like me wouldn’t have 192

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much need to wax before he entered a swimming race. Was Turn kissing me and pretending it was Race? So that’s why Race insisted I be shaved. He had a beard, upper and lower, while he’d made sure I had neither. So Turn could tell us apart in the dark. He must have big plans, whether for tonight or tomorrow. As bad as I felt, and as bad as Turn looked, I hoped Race could wait for tomorrow. But he was still our ticket out of this place. Fingers tangled in my short hair, twisting a fistful to pull my head sideways. Race. Turn wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t, with his thick fingers. “Are you in the mood to get fucked, guapo?” I felt Turn open his mouth to speak, and put my hand over his lips. Well, over his jaw with one finger touching his lip. It was enough to cut him off. “The question that matters is whether you’re in the mood to fuck, isn’t it?” 193

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He chuckled and released my hair. On the other side, Turn relaxed. A little. Race bit my neck. Hard. I swallowed a noise. He bit down harder, and his fingers dug into my flanks. “Race?” Turn knew something was happening, but not what. His hands skimmed up my arms. “Race, stop.” I caught his hands, held them. Hot liquid—spit or blood—dribbled down the side of my throat. Felt like a chunk being torn out. Turn’s hands yanked free of mine. “Stop it, Race. You win. Whatever the game is, you win.” Race made a gagging noise and staggered away from me. Turn felt about my neck with lips and fingertips, and found the spot instantly. His body temperature spiked, and he quivered, muscles knotting and swelling against me. 194

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I sagged against him. Breathe, Turn. “Come to bed, you two.” Turn went absolutely still. I found his ear with my lips. “Hold it together.” Race didn’t fuck either of us. Which was smart of him. Frankly, I don’t know how he dared sleep in the same bed, as angry as Turn was, but he politely advised Turn to take the wall side and me to take the middle. He stretched out next to me, cupping my denuded balls gently in one hand while I lay in Turn’s arms. I didn’t look forward to the morning. Trouble waiting to happen. Turn and I generally both wake up horny and ready. Sex with Race had to be like sucking a bowl of crack. Dangerous and exciting, knowing that the very next breath could mean addiction. Crack sex with Turn’s ex? While Turn held me, heard every wet noise, every grunt and every moan? That would be awful. Worse, maybe, than listening while Turn 195

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and Race did it. Maybe. I’d known too many crack whores. I didn’t want to be one.

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Chapter Eight

“KT, are you asleep?” I sighed to cover any change in my breathing and snuggled my face in against his hairy chest. Then realized that left my back to Race. I wiggled over to snuggle my back against Turn. Safer that way. “Race?” “I’m here, Scotty.” That was... tenderness? From Race? “Race—If you want to punish me, bite me.” Race’s voice hardened. “Biting him is more effective. More fun, too.” “Fuck... Come home, Race. What you’re 197

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becoming here—it’s not you.” “Don’t you get it yet? I’m not the Paladin you still are. But I save a dozen lives in a week. Sometimes twice that. This time last year, between suffocation and overdosing the sedatives, our crossing facilitators were losing an average of one baby a day. Now I make the rules. People obey. And the babies—mostly—don’t die.” Crossing facilitator. Does that mean coyote, or mule? “But the fourteen-year-old girls you send north still walk the streets to get fucked by strangers. How are you going to save them?” “They’re at least fifteen and volunteers, or all mine are.” “What does a fifteen-year-old know?” “Your cultural bias is showing. Take a look around while you’re here. You wouldn’t be so sure of yourself if you spent a week in one of our slums.” “They’re not our slums.” 198

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“They’re mine. I’ve seen too much to turn my back on these people. I can’t let go. These people have no hope, no chance of a better tomorrow. Every election they get a sky-full of promises and half of them are lies. I’ll do what I have to, kill who I have to, fuck who I have to—I even pray for the power to turn it around.” “Listen to yourself! Don’t lose your head. You’re picking a lost cause.” “It was a lost cause all along. But I always play to win.” “That’s a contradiction.” “You liked my contradictions, once upon a time.” “Get real, Race! You’ll have to pay the price. Your own people will write you off. Then they’ll hunt you down.” “So? Only the dead get off scot-free. It’s worth it. You’ll know why. My sister will know why. Nobody else matters. And with Senior’s information, and yours, I’ll last a lot longer.” 199

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“I can’t give you—” “TK...Scotty... I’m not actually asking, and in my position I don’t take no for an answer. Everybody’s restless. My associates, and probably half my rivals, know who you are. Thanks to your father, they also know your vulnerability. I can’t protect him if you defy us.” Turn broke a sweat, wetting my entire back, and his spread hand pressed my tender abdomen, pulling me close in to his wholly nonerotic steam. Race’s buddies scared him. I had to control my own pulse, before he noticed I was paying attention. Or at least control my breath. Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Hold two three— “What do you want?” The defeat in his voice made my bones ache. “I want to know everything your people know about my operations, about my allies’ operations, and about my rivals’ operations.” 200

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“Don’t want too fucking much, do you? Where am I supposed to get this info, dig it out of my ass? All I know is bits I gleaned here and there.” “I know you have more than the data you personally collected. You compared notes with other agents and LEOs on your case. You can get into the other agents’ databases, read their reports.” “I can’t! Each agent has his own virtual drive, with his own codewords to get into it. Besides, we’d only have raw data. Homeland Security is making the decisions, and they don’t even want us extrapolating from the information we collect. If I hear one more snotty HS guy tell me ‘just the facts, sir,’ I’m gonna punch somebody.” “We’ll worry about the extrapolation. Just tell us what you know, and how to reach the databases then we can break their codes.” “Look, I said KT’s a software expert, but he’s not—” “I know. You just said that to deflect their 201

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interest. The illusion might prove useful, though.” Turn shifted uneasily, tugging me under him and resting his weight across my aching abdomen and hips, like when he’s bringing me in from a nightmare. “Race, this is treason.” “No, actually it is conspiracy to... never mind. You’re not going to leave any fingerprints on the data. You won’t find enough data to blow an operation. You’re not identifying any undercover agents or putting their lives in danger. I’ll call it good if you let me know what the FBI knows about me. If I were home, I could probably get most of this data with a request under the Freedom of Information act. Right now, what you’re giving me is a competitive edge, so that I can maintain my position and keep enforcing policies that save little children’s lives. Then you can go home, to your uncomplicated life and your uncomplicated blond lover.” Bitterness. I knew bitterness when I heard it. “Did you really do him and broadcast it?” 202

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A wicked chuckle. “He’s quite the star. My lieutenants can’t get over it.” “He’ll hate you for it.” True that. “What he thinks doesn’t matter.” “It matters to me. And what am I supposed to think?” “You’re grown up enough to realize I had to lay a spectacular bet to win you, and I had to do it fast, with what was available. I bet your ass, quite literally, that I would have his ass within an hour. That I could do what Senior couldn’t.” “You don’t have to hurt him, or humiliate him, to make your point.” “Wrong. Look, here’s the situation. There’s production, shipping, and distribution. Distribution was split between Senior in the east and Juarez in the west. Within weeks after I took over the shipping operations, Senior came here, leaving a third of our markets unattended, and further stirred the pot by 203

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offing the production jefe and taking his position. Senior’s a natural caudillo—strong man—but he doesn’t know the troops and they don’t know him. My marrying Julieta got me some homeboy cred, but as a Cuban I’m a foreigner just like Senior. The troops have been justifiably concerned. When Senior proposed stealing your home computers to find out what the FBI knows, Juarez raised the ante—without telling the rest of us—by sending the team to steal you too. But now the three of us won. Think about that. And once in a while try to remember what we had. How you said you’d always be in love with me. How—” This I didn’t want to hear. I mumbled to break the conversation. Turn stroked down my arm, down my side, down my back. He told me it was okay and that he had me, that I was safe. The words, with the stroking, eased my tension even though I knew it wasn’t okay and that our 204

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safety was ephemeral, if not illusory. How often had he spoken to me like this in the months we’d been together? How thoroughly had he trained my subconscious? ··· I spent most of the next day following the lee edge of the shade around the atrium, studying the wall opposite wherever I currently sat. I’d dressed while Turn and Race slept in the utter dark. The closet had magically materialized three outfits. One was Turn’s size; it felt like linen slacks and a crisp guayabera shirt. The second was a narrower cut of Turn’s outfit. The third was an undecorated shirt and a pair of pantalons with both drawstring and beltloops. A uniform to mark me as one of the peons. I would have taken Race’s, except his slacks wouldn’t cover my ankles. I loathe ankle-waders. I did swipe the belt and sleeveless undershirt 205

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from Race’s hangar. Then thought to rifle his pockets from the pile by the bed. Pen-knife, which felt just like Turn’s. The silver razor. I left them both. They’d be missed immediately. One key, which might be missed long before I had a chance to find what it fit. I left it, too. I did tuck my purloined steak knife in my pocket, with a thong wrapped around the blade for sort of a sheathe. Near the end of my morning exercises, Turn and Race emerged from the suite in navy slacks and guayabera shirts. Turn looked at me and blushed. I looked away, folded the move into my kata. Pretended I hadn’t noticed either Turn’s blush or their matching heads of wet black hair. They had matching haircuts. How sweet. From then, I spent my day on assessing the physical layout of the place, especially the potential exits. All the windows here were small, and got 206

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smaller upstairs. There were two narrow balconies set against blank walls on the third floor, where a large window or door had been closed off and the space covered with brightly tiled swirly sea-life murals that made me think of underwater scenes as Van Gogh would paint them. The walls otherwise were of stone, cut very rough to maximize shadow. I thought about third-floor rooms with no window. Even in a fortress, people need a little bit of a window in case of a blackout, right? So those were storage rooms, or safe rooms. They had to be storage; you don’t advertise the location of safe rooms. Do you store spare furniture there, Race? Or equipment? Contraband? People? I thought of climbing those rough walls. It would have to be at night, or while everyone was completely distracted. But Turn couldn’t do that kind of climbing. All day the blue uniforms plied me with glasses of tea and soda, with scrambled eggs rolled in 207

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tortillas and a bowl of cut melons for breakfast, shrimp fajitas and soup for lunch, and with a box full of inedibly sweet candies after lunch. From where I sat in the cool of the evening, the largest balcony half-blocked my view of a pair of windows that gave softer light, as if filtering it through curtains too sheer to see from my distance. I called that the dulce room, and watched it until I caught a glimpse of Julieta’s silhouette. Security lights came on, four of them and then three more. Okay, since the first ones on were not in deepest shadow, they weren’t sensor-driven. Timers, or a manual switch. Either way, I knew that these four dimmer lights were on one electric circuit and these three brighter ones were on another. Julieta came to the window and looked down into the atrium. I’d positioned myself where a vinecovered lattice to my left threw a plaid shadow over me, betting that the reflected light to my right would less illuminate than confuse my outline. 208

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Either she didn’t see me or she quickly saw enough, and withdrew before anyone could accuse her of staring. I bet she’s lonely tonight. Whatever Doña Julieta was hiding, she adored Race, and she knew where his focus was. I pictured her upbraiding him: How do you think I feel when I see the servants smirk? But she didn’t know enough Spanish to say that, from what Race said. And she looked too proud to say it. I would guess Race would be doing what he could to keep Turn and me from being alone together. Since Turn had shut down any option of a locked door between us at night, we were going to have a babysitter—and who better than Racien, with his bulldog mouth and his hard, hungry eyes? Julieta’s balcony was more than twenty feet up. Not unreachable from the roof. I pictured manga ninjas rappelling down from the roof. The glittering edge of the roof became broken bottles in my imagination, though, and 209

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sawed through the rope. That glitter very well could be broken bottles. I’d need to take that into account if I ever wanted onto the roof. For example, as a way out of this sunblasted gilded cage. Turn couldn’t climb. But what if I climbed out of here, then came to the street door from the outside and knocked? They’d have to have some kind of security camera, and if they saw me on the wrong side of the door, they’d have to open it, right? So, if Turn was lurking on their side of the door when they opened it for me, he could do his steam-roller imitation and blast past them to get out. They’d chase us. I run for fun, but Turn with his mangled foot wouldn’t get far without a diversion. I looked at the dulce window. Hmmm. One of the doors to my left bounced open. Race stalked through, his onyx gaze settling immediately on me. Two of the blues came scurrying behind him. He snapped orders, too quietly for me to pick up. 210

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But his attention was on me. My mouth dried. He was furious. I think we’ve worn out our welcome. Turn, his mouth set in a flat line, limped out from behind him, and got between him and me. Race bared his teeth and said something. Turn recoiled. “Will you listen to yourself? If I didn’t see your mouth moving, I’d swear it was my father’s voice!” Race snapped a retort I didn’t hear, though I heard the anger clear enough. Turn’s rumble didn’t get through either. The gilding was coming off the cage. We had to get away somehow. While they argued, four of the blues brought out what looked like a wide-spread X made of sixfoot sections of a telephone pole, with heavy lawntractor wheels that creaked on the tile. The men set it under the wall between the potted kumquats, centered under the strongest spotlight, and kicked 211

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braces in place to lock the wheels. I had no idea what it was, but— Fuck. The straps attached to the top ends of the beams were wrist restraints. One of the men spoke quietly to the others, and abruptly four of them darted between me and Turn. What did they think they going to do to him? Whatever he wants, Turn, let him have it. Please, let him have it. I felt a movement behind my neck. Outtahere. I dove low and to the right, gauging the shadows of the two men who’d sneaked up on me. Two others tackled me, brought me down. I kicked, elbowed, gouged and—never mind my aching face—bit anything that came in range. They didn’t bite back. That said something. I didn’t know what. Turn bellowed. “This is between you and me! Let him go!” 212

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“We have discussed that as much as I intend to.” Race switched to Spanish and ordered them to do something “quickly.” I fought dirty. They didn’t. It wasn’t enough of an advantage. The name of the game is be hit and hit back, but they weren’t hitting me. Just grabbing me, and holding on. I refused to carry my own weight. They carried it for me, across the atrium to the X frame. No amount of contorting could keep them from wrestling off my shirt, ripping off one sleeve in the process, then strapping down one wrist. I twisted to see Turn, held down by three guys, his face dark with rage. Meet me at the door, Turn. We’d never had a signal for that. But we had meet me outside. I stopped fighting long enough to sign that. They caught my hand, and strapped it down. I still kicked through one’s knee, leaving him hissing and writhing on the rough tile. And I put my heel into another guy’s mouth. 213

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They left my pants on. I tried to focus on what that meant. Couldn’t. Tried to focus on anything to get my breathing under control, but I was panting hard, ready to pass out. I had the knife in my pocket, but no way to reach it. My heartbeat deafened me. Outtahere! Outtahere! Outtahere! Then they came at me with a leather gag. Why? Not to spare Turn’s sensibilities. Or Race’s. Whose? Whose would count? “¡Julieta! ¡Doña Julieta! ¡Ayudame, Ju—” I interrupted myself to clench my teeth. They pried open my jaws, not gently. “¡Julie—” The gag tasted of vomit and soured leather. I did gag, which let them force it deeper. “Race, don’t do this. You’ll break him, and then what good will he be?” “What good is he now, if I can’t use him to bring you in line?” “I’ll do it. I’ll do what I can.” Race laughed. “I’m certain you will.” 214

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A phone rang. I couldn’t breathe. The gag, or the swelling in my face, or the combination of them, cut off any airway. A tiny, tinny voice whispered to Race; it mattered, but I lost track of how. Sparks drifted across my vision, being born and drifting and dying and being born again. I strained to reach the gag with either hand, and couldn’t. I slapped the wood of the frame in an S-O-S signal, three-three-three, but nobody paid attention. Race yanked back my hair. “Try this trick a second time, and I’ll make you pray for death.” I can’t breathe. Let me go. I can’t breathe. Can’t breathe! Please, let me go! Spark spun about him, changing colors. Yellow. Orange. Red. He wasn’t there anymore. Only the sparks, the panic, the straps pulling at my arms, and the red sand moving in, filling me. I was lost in a red desert, smothering, while hostile 215

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voices muttered in the hot wind. Turn yelled something in Spanish, swore, and yelled again. “He will die before Racien gets back! Who will pay the price for that?” I could breathe. That thing had left my mouth. I sucked in great gasps of wind. Turn leaned over me, yanking and twisting the belt-straps that pinned my wrists. I was half-free. My nerves thrummed with adrenaline. When I crashed, I would crash hard. But until then? “The door, Turn.” My other hand fell free. I sprang atop the X-frame, and used it as a vaulting buck to reach one of the projecting stones that marked the division between the first and second stories, and swarmed up the wall like a six-foot squirrel monkey on an eXtasy binge. Someone down there got the same impression, and called me a crazed monkey. “Don’t shoot him! He’s not yours to shoot!” 216

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Turn. I pictured him anime-style, an overpowered tyke throwing a tantrum. My monkey! Leave my monkey alone! A row of glittering glass shards guarded the edge of the roof, but a few inches back was some kind of vent. It looked like it had been built to last centuries. I sure hoped it had. I yanked my belt loose and swung the buckle end at it. Yes! Fuck! The buckle had gone around and around instead of boomeranging to me. I couldn’t yank too hard without losing my balance. I gave a few testing jerks, while my adrenaline rush faded to sickness. Darts rang off the stone wall. Turn protested, saying something I couldn’t translate. All this noise would have Race racing down the stairs, or cursing the elevator’s speed. Turn needed to get in position by the door, and needed to fade from the guys’ attention. The buckle fell free. I slung it again, and yes! 217

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caught the buckle with my other hand. A dart pierced my calf. Noooo! I jumped while I still could, levering with my elbows planted on the leather, and scrambled up. The roof pitch was shallow, or I’d never have made it. The dart in my leg trailed a long gleaming wire. I yanked it out, dart and wire and all, and that hurt a whole lot more than when it went in. But an electric dart gun needs to hit with both darts to complete the circuit, and the other dart of this pair dangled in the loose cloth of my pantalons. I looked down once, at the men dragging a ladder across the atrium and Turn’s bared teeth shining in the security lights. Maybe they couldn’t see me now that I was above the lights. I ran across the roof toward the street, toward where the roof overlapped the perimeter wall. More glass lined the edge of the roof, glittering in the moonlight and in the reflected security lights of 218

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the neighboring houses. The freaking neighborhood was a cluster of mini-fortresses, most two-stories and about half the size of Race’s, with a patrol-path around the exterior wall of each. Didn’t see anyone patrolling. The northern sky glowed orange. A city. I pried at one broken bottle with my knife-blade, but it was solidly set. I hadn’t brought the belt I’d used to help my scramble onto the roof. That left my pants, which—wrapped about the base of these two larger bottles here, might hold my weight. They did. Still left me a hefty drop, but I used my best classroom impact-absorbing roll, and it hurt a whole lot less than whatever they would have done to me if I’d stayed. And I’d hung onto my britches, too. Now to get the door open, so Turn could come out the easy way. I planted myself in front of a door, flipped my willy out through the fly of my stolen underpants, 219

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and did my best approximation of a hula while flagging my pantalons at them. Surely they had a camera. Maybe with a sound pickup? “Mama where’s your pretty little girl tonight?” What would be the Spanish for that? “Dondesta’ su chica linda eeeeeste noche?” Argh. The meter was impossible. I switched back to English. “Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best—” I waggled my willie. Eat me! Heigh ho! Blue uniforms, coming at me like ants from a kicked hill. I took off, up the next wall, also glass-topped, and looked over. Guys in neat gray uniforms played cards around a table by a fountain. Ripe for all kinds of grotesque and improbable mischief. I pried a dirtdauber nest out of the wall and lobbed it like a handgrenade in the middle of the table. “Attercop! Some men are coming to fuck with you!” I came off the wall at an angle and hit the next 220

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house, bellowing, “Sweet home Alabama!” Empty! Fuck! But no glass. Probably sensors everywhere. Not that it mattered. The blue uniforms and the gray were brawling. Turn came charging out onto the street, knocking aside anyone in his path. I stepped into a splash of light. He met my eyes. Downtown, I signaled. If we lived through this, we needed to come up with more practical signals, like “go north” or “I’ll run interference.” He saluted, and vanished in the shadows to the east. I ran along the top of the glassless wall, which merged with the wall of the next house over, singing at the top of my voice. “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!” The next wall did have glass set into it. I stopped short of the shards and peed into the dimly lit atrium there. Someone caterwauled in rage. 221

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A hand gun cracked, and tile shattered on a roof behind me. Don’t stand in the fire! I dropped to the street and ran. A while later, just past a pair of churches, I heard a whippoorwill. The call seemed out of place, but I couldn’t figure out exactly why. So I kept running. “Dammit, KT, come back!” Turn was leaning against the base of a statue of some robed saint at the gateway to a neatly landscaped graveyard. Well behind us, the spotlights and gunfire and car-horns and yelling seemed adequate to distract anyone who might have an excessive interest in other people’s nighttime activities. We huddled together a moment, getting our breathing synchronized. Then I thought of something. “How’d you beat me here?” His skin warmed against my face. “I stole a bicycle.” 222

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“It wasn’t chained up?” “Um...it was in use. I needed it, though. Told the guy to bill the federal police.” I didn’t see the sense of that. Not that it mattered. “Still got the bike? We need to get to reach that cityglow up there.” “Right. Can you run alongside me and hold on?” “Watch me.” “Wonderful. Is there a reason you have your pants in your hand instead of on your legs?” Not anymore. I put them on while he watched, and trotted easily alongside him, using the steady pull of the bicycle to conserve my strength. I’d guess the distance was around eight or ten miles, less than the half-marathons I run. We found the road immediately, and only had to get off it to avoid oncoming cars twice. The city, whatever it was, seemed to have based its economy on the noise level in its bars. The streets smelled of fish, diesel, beer, and peed-on walls. Turn leaned the bike 223

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against a wall. “Here’s the plan,” he muttered. We’ll walk separately, in case anyone’s phoned ahead with orders to watch for the pair of us, but keep in sight. I’m a businessman on holiday, and I’ve been mugged. You’re a college student, and coincidentally enough you’ve also been mugged.” “Should I ditch the knife?” “You got the razor?” “No, a steak knife. It might have come in handy.” “Might still. Silver, right? See if you can swap it for a minute on somebody’s phone. Call Ron Sweet. Here’s his number—” “I know his number.” I had a mnemonic, which I didn’t need him to screw with. “But he might still be in the hospital.” Turn took a long, sibilant breath. “Hospital?” “The truck that nabbed you knocked him through a crosswalk Friday afternoon.” “Fuck.” 224

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“That’s why I had to come after you alone.” “You didn’t have to, KT, but I’ll never forget that you did.” “You’d do it for me.” His lips brushed my jaw, along the living side. “True.” “Where are we?” “No mountains to the south, so it’s not Tuxpan. That’s the only city in this region I’ve ever visited. Could be Altamira, Tampico, even Veracruz. Or someplace I never heard of.” “Does it make a difference? You think we could jump on a ship in the right place?” “Iffy. Some ports are run by the smugglers, but I have numbers to call. People will come for us. If we’re in the wrong place, though, they might not be able to come quickly enough, or might choose not to come quickly enough.” He rubbed his face. “If we lose track of one another, get home however you can. Don’t come back for me.” 225

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Fuck. Any idiot could see he was tired, and in pain. What could I do? “I guess I could call my lawyer.” “Not unless you paid him.” Like I’d had the money to do that. Unless Mother paid him, nobody had. “I could try to call Sweetie. He might have been released from the hospital.” Nobody else who had any pull would ever listen to me. “But does he have the pull to get us out of here?” “Ron has contacts in the federales, with the border patrol, with the Texas Rangers, you name it. He’ll know someone. Gina is most likely handling things if neither Ron nor I can be reached. If she can communicate with Ron, and he tells her who to call...” And if whichever of Sweet’s buddies she calls on is willing to deal with her instead of him. But I think she was the bitch I’d tangled with once before, and if I tried to call her, she might never get to the point of contacting Sweet. She’d say something 226

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authoritarian and I’d analyze her character for her, and things would deteriorate from there. We picked our way through the slums, ignoring the evil eye from every opening in every shanty, every cardboard-covered window opening. Once past the ravaged tenements, we caught sight of a plaza hung with fake-paper lanterns and studded with torches, where tourists danced among grinning musicians and dancers plainly dressed in “local color” costumes. We split up there. I watched from the dark while Turn approached a tourist couple and spoke quietly to them. They sucked in their breath and expostulated about “those bastards!” and each of them tried to hand him a phone. He made two calls on the first, then handed it back. They gestured effusively, insisting he sit with them until the cops came. I saw him hesitate. Probably thinking of the risk to them, if any of Race’s thugs, or his rivals’ thugs, 227

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found him. But they were not sober enough to take “no” for an answer. They pulled him to a torchlit table and fished an ice cube out an umbrelladecorated drink for him to hold to his lip. Without warning, police—the locals and the federales—with guns drawn rushed in from several angles at once. “Nobody move, nobody gets hurt!” English. Like I needed any other clue they’d come for Turn. Maybe me too. Turn’s weakness. I didn’t see one person obey the command. The tourists milled, objecting noisily, some shaking fingers at the black-uniformed armed men. “How dare you scare my wife like that!” The bartenders, waitresses, musicians, local dancers, and begging children melted out of sight, taking what they could and leaving the rest. The locals looked a lot smarter, from my angle. Then I noticed the cops were mostly looking at each other. Uncertain. Suspicious. Fuck. They were— or belonged to—rival factions. Which ones belonged 228

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to Race, or one of the other bad guys, and which ones were the good guys? Why were some carrying shotguns, some machine guns, some pistols? A cold ring settled against the back of my neck. Fuck. “Good evening, Señor Turner. Please walk forward very slowly.” I had the knife in my hand. Which was very stupid, really. I had no training in how to use a knife in a fight. I’d always seemed to miss those weeks in class. I could try denying I was Señor Turner. For all the good it would do me. “You want me to drop my knife first?” “If you would be so kind.” I dropped it. He didn’t bother to pick it up. So much for my chance of kicking him in the head and high-tailing it out of here. He prodded me forward, into the standoff. Turn 229

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was talking rapidly, in Spanish I couldn’t follow at all. When he saw me, showing my palms at shoulder height, he paled. I took that as a bad sign. A motorcycle roared in among us. The uniformed guy who got off it had three rows of medals and an air of arrogance. When he pulled off his helmet, the pistols went back in their holsters. The long arms immediately pointed themselves at the cobblestones. Turn’s bruised eyes lit. He knew this guy. Knew him personally. The guy looked Turn up and down impassively, then looked me up and down with a cold malice. Oh, yeah, he knew Turn very personally. And saw me as a potential rival. I tried to back up. The cold gun muzzle had vanished, but my back met a wall of bodies. The man simply looked at one of the local cops, who rushed to take the motorcycle. The man walked through the cops, who parted left and right as 230

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Father’s men had for him, and laid his hand on the bumper of a pickup truck. Someone in plain black fatigues scurred up to him, saluted, and handed him a set of keys. He got in the driver’s side. Turn climbed in the passenger side. What was I supposed to do? “KT—come!” Arf. Fucking arf-arf. When I reached the truck, they were whispering intensely. They cut off and looked at me. “KT, it’s okay. Get in.” It was either okay, or as far as you can get from okay. I looked at the unhappy cops to my left and right, and at the avidly curious tourists beyond. Several of them were filming this with cameras and phones, which might not be a real smart thing to do. I got in the back of the truck. It had handles welded in place. The man dumped us in an empty soccer field and drove away. Turn was leaning too much on his good 231

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foot, and looked like his balance was suffering. I went to his side, but the most he would do was hook a hand over my shoulder and let me help balance him. A brightly-striped four-seater helicopter with glass doors—exactly like those used to fly tourists over the water, so they can get their shits and shivers looking at all the sharks among the swimmers— landed in less than five minutes. The pilot, hidden behind goggles and a face scarf, didn’t speak to us over the loud, shuddering roar of the engine and rotor. Turn didn’t speak either, so neither did I. After dropping us at a section of weedy beach, the little chopper took off. Sand blasted my unprotected arms and face. The rotor noise hadn’t yet faded when the stuttering chop of a much larger rotor overlapped it. A huge helicopter, this one all black inside and outside, landed. Men in pocket-covered black uniforms poured out. I huddled against Turn’s back as they surrounded us and flicked red LED lights at 232

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us. One held up a phone by Turn’s face comparing the bruised reality to what looked like his driver’s license pic, and said, “This is him! Let’s go!” Sounded like a New York accent. The breath I was holding whooshed out in relief. But then the uniforms crowded between me and Turn, shuffling him onto the helicopter. “Turn!” “Whoa!” he yelled, spreading his arms to grasp both sides of the doorway. “Where’s my brother?” “We only have orders for you, sir.” “Your orders are materially defective.” “Orders are orders. You can arrange transportation for him once you get home, sir.” “How can I go home and leave my brother to the enemy? Would you do that?” “Technically—” “Fuck your technicalities.” Turn shoved away from the helicopter. “I’ll walk home first. You explain that to the asshole who cut your orders.” 233

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They made a phone call, while Turn stood pressing his left arm to my right arm, breathing heavily. The helicopter’s rotor made lazy passes overhead, just hard enough to chill me completely. Finally someone handed me a sleeveless gray sweatshirt. Marked, interestingly enough, with a small circled star, the Texas Rangers’ crest. He spoke with a peculiarly familiar drawl. “As my Gigi would say, put this on before you catch your death of cold.” I knew then they were taking me along. They couldn’t leave me behind wearing that. New York snapped shut his phone with undue force and nodded to Turn. “You’ll have to sign waivers, sir, but that’s at the other end.” Turn and I were shuffled to the back of the chopper, to a windowless compartment about the size of a compact shower. He stood in the doorway, speaking quietly to someone I barely heard and couldn’t see. Then he was handed a phone, and said “yes sir” and “no sir” a lot, then said he had four 234

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toes that could use an X-ray and some burns, while we both had bruises. Yes, we were both up on our tetanus shots. We landed. Leaving the compartment, I looked out the window and saw ambulance helicopters on both sides. This was the roof of a hospital. I balked. Fuck. A building packed with uniforms, and every one of them would treat me like I was a stubborn six-yearold. Which would make me disconcertingly likely to act like a stubborn six-year-old. I’d say things I shouldn’t. Doesn’t matter how much I try in that situation; nothing comes out right. Turn needed his foot looked at, though. He needed X-rays, and whatever they could do for those burns. And he sagged, bracing with both hands on the shoulder of a seat by the front door. Bruised eyes met mine. “Can you hold it together for just a couple of hours, KT? I’ve got to get some painkillers or I’m going to start busting things.” 235

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Yeah, I’ll make nice. For you. You don’t even have to say please.

236

Chapter Nine

“Son...Kendall...” The doctor’s tired-old-woman voice caught my attention. I stopped interweaving my fingers and tracing the edges of my rib-bruises to look at her. They’d taken Turn to one examination room and me to another. I’d told them I didn’t need looking at, but they’d insisted. I’d cooperated, even removed Race’s undershirt and the Ranger’s sweatshirt. Now this woman was calling me son. She had no reason to do that, unless she was using the familial term to grease a bullet. “I need to do a forensic exam of your rectal area, 237

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son. I know it’s embarrassing, but we need DNA evidence in case the police ever catch who did this to you.” I could say I got all these marks at a bondage party, maybe laugh at her and accuse her of being naïve. But she wouldn’t buy it. She was one of those. If I said the sky was blue, she’d have another color for it. “This happened to me in Mexico. Nobody’s ever going to get caught.” “Like nobody ever comes here from Mexico? I can give you a sedative. It will help.” “No. No on the exam. And before you suggest I file a police complaint, let me tell you ‘no’ on that too.” She took off her glasses, polished them, and fiddled them back in place. It took a minute, with her light palsy. “I’m afraid I have to insist. There’s a mandate to recognize male rape, and to prosecute—” “I said no.” “Are you fond of the man who brought you in?” 238

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I didn’t see her angle, and that scared me. “Why?” “Because by law if I see a rape victim, I have to report that a crime has been committed. These bite marks... Kendall, this one on your neck will probably calcify. It could give you problems for months, if not years. Marks like these are called probable cause, meaning someone needs to be arrested. Cops being cops, if you don’t let me obtain proof someone else did all this and they see a likely-enough suspect right at hand—” “Bullshit.” She had to be bluffing. “That’s French for no.” “I have authority to insist, for your own good.” “For what?” My fucking voice cracked. For your own good is one of my most familiar and least favorite lines. I took a breath. “I don’t need to get the gamma globulin shots, okay? I already had the whole series of those, back when I got my face rearranged. You’re perfectly welcome to give me a massive dose of anti-clap antibiotics, though. You 239

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can do that without poking any foreign objects where they don’t belong.” “Are you HIV positive?” “No.” I got off the table, really glad I’d kept my donated pants on. She edged between me and the door. “Do you want to be?” “If I got infected in the last couple of days, an exam now won’t change that.” “Get back on the table.” “No, we’re done here. I’ll get antibiotics from my own personal physician.” Like I had one. Turn would spring for the bill, though. Just like he’d spring for the shots to ward off any HIV germs. He believes in private medical options, and didn’t let me go to the county’s indigent-health people for even a flu shot. The doc hit a button on the desk phone. “Orlando and Tyrone?” I heard her static-laced words echoing on the intercom outside the door. 240

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I need to get out of here. I reached for Race’s undershirt, and wrestled it on. She sighed and pulled an assortment of full syringes from her pocket. “Orlando and Tyrone, report to exam room B, stat.” I hit my own lung-powered intercom, called in my own muscle. “TURN!” Then I decided not to wait for Turn. I got to the door, yanked it open just in time to see Turn collar-snag two rentacops and sling them aside. He stopped like a freight train, with no grace but plenty of power. “You got a problem, KT?” “The old lady in the white coat here is threatening me with an act of battery.” I couldn’t keep the quiver out of my voice, much as I hated it. I took another breath and tried to lower my tone below squeak-level. “I’ve said no. She won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” He looked past me, using his official FBI I’m in charge here face. “Ma’am?” 241

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“Kendall, this is ten miligrams of Valium. It will help settle your nerves, that’s all. Then we’ll do what you know we have to do.” The doc spoke soothingly, like she knew all the answers and was patiently waiting for everyone else to grow up, calm down, and agree with her. Anyone else in the family would have said my name is Turner, to put her in her place. She didn’t have permission to use my first name. But I focused on her syringe; it held enough liquid to fill a pingpong ball to overflowing. “In what reality do you exist? Ten mils of Valium can tranquilize a rutting grizzly bear!” “No, it can’t,” put in one of the rentacops. “Shut up, Lando.” Turn’s arm crept about my waist. A little public for that, but I was willing to follow his lead. I leaned into him. His breath hitched. Then he pinned my wrists. “Do it quickly.” 242

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No. My pants were jerked down on one side. A wet, cold wipe scrubbed briefly. “This is battery. I have a lawyer.” Why did my voice have to go shrill? Turn’s grip tightened. “I have his medical power of attorney. A courier is en route with it now.” I signed that so you could fight Mother if she tried to commit me again! If I tried to say anything out loud, it would come out wrong. Would enforce their certainty that I was out of my head with panic. The needle stung. The liquid going in hurt in a dull way that faded rapidly. My eyes burned, and that didn’t fade. You let them fuck me. “Why?” “Shh. It’s just to calm you down, help you get a grip.” “I didn’t need a shot for that, Turn. I just needed you. I knew you wouldn’t let...” He had let them touch me. Let them take control of me. Trusted their 243

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assumption I couldn’t control myself. “No exam.” I held my voice to a whisper, and sure enough that made everyone look at me. The doc reached for my arm, but let her old-lady hand fall when I glared at her. She smiled, sadly. “We’ll talk about it in a few minutes, Kendall.” Yeah, I know that talk. They use it in psych units when you’ve just been given a shot that takes a few minutes to reduce to you to a thumb-sucking fouryear-old. I could see it all in a manga sketch, with me shrinking down out of my clothes. Turn let them do that to me. The straight lines of the room smudged, like someone had run a wet finger down the sketch. Fog seeped slowly through my head, muting all the sharp corners and hard edges, reducing sounds to mumbles that didn’t really matter. The fog muted my panic, too, but not the feeling I’d lost something. I was alone in the fog. I realized I had always been alone, and that when I thought I 244

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wasn’t, I’d been lying to myself. I think I stayed conscious. I know I didn’t get the examination. Turn had a forceful conversation with the doc about it. Maybe the same discussion I would have had. He took personal charge of me. Like he was my babysitter. I stumbled from room to room, his hand gripping my elbow, and sat in bleach-faded chairs watching him get X-rayed and get run through other machines. None of the scenes had color. They were just sketches, done with a light hand and a blunt pencil, each discarded as Turn pulled me to the next room. At some point a man in mirrored sunglasses and a nervous snap to his gum-chewing handed Turn a brown envelope and a half-stuffed new gym bag with the tags still on it. Turn thanked him and pulled papers out of the envelope for the hospital ladies to photocopy. Sunglasses Man stood waiting there, rigidly erect in his crisp blue suit, his mouth 245

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clamped down to a one-inch slit and little beads of sweat lining the edges of his crew cut as if it was ninety degrees in here. Watching him made me tired. The next room was Sunglasses Man’s car. Turn sat in back, beside me, talking soft meaningless words at me. The room after that was a hotel bedroom. It had a chair too. I sat in the chair, watching Turn lie in bed staring back at me. He slept some. I dozed in little bits too, although when he asked me if I had, I didn’t really feel like answering. We flew east first class. When he bought the tickets, he had to show my passport from the brown envelope. Looked like the other contents of his safe deposit box there too, meaning it should have my birth certificate. I spoke only where the minimum of good manners demanded it. I kept my eyes closed as much as possible, and when they were open I kept my gaze 246

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on my lap or my feet. The slightest stray would let me catch glimpses of the hideous oversized shoes Turn wore to accommodate his foot bandages. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to see as bad as I wanted to avoid looking at Turn. We kept the same seats until we reached Atlanta. Along the way, his foot swelled so he had to loosen his laces twice. Once there, he said we’d have a twohour layover and suggested lunch. I didn’t answer. He could have lunch if he wanted. He could provide lunch for me if he wanted to. He bought lunch. I couldn’t eat anything but a cup of yogurt. After watching me push the rest of the food around my plate a while, he took my fork out of my hand and slammed it down on the table. Whatever. He dragged me to the phone kiosk, had his number switched to the first phone he grabbed, and dialed with swift, hard jabs of his blunt fingers. A number he didn’t need to look up. Calling the boss. 247

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Or calling Cori, Race’s sister. Or calling Race, to say he’d gotten me to the right coast and would be on his way back as soon as the next plane lifted. My guts stirred uneasily. I couldn’t really identify why, and really didn’t want to guess. Not his boss, or Cori, or Race. He’d called my shrink, Angie. He told her he couldn’t tell if I was half-catatonic or in a deep sulk, but could she take a few minutes to talk to me? I turned his tone of voice into lines. Jagged lines. I met his eyes briefly, and finally identified the color of gray there. They were exactly the gray of an old-fashioned butcher’s knife, with splinters of ice radiating from the pupil. “I don’t appreciate your assumption that whenever I fail to acquiesce in your suggestions, or to behave in the way you wish, I must be off my fucking rocker.” Age drained from his face. Relief replaced it. I looked down again. 248

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He handed me the phone. “I’m not interested in discussing this right now,” I said, and snapped the phone shut. “KT?” “I’m not interested in discussing this right now,” I told his clown-sized shoes. “You can hand me my papers now. Please.” “KT, look, maybe I shouldn’t have agreed without more information! Okay! I didn’t know you’d take it like this! I only wanted what was best for you.” How many times had I heard that? But not from Turn. A traitor’s kiss tasted even worse from Turn’s mouth. “I’m not interested in discussing this right now.” “I thought you liked Valium.” When it’s my idea. When I pick the dose and the circumstances. “My paperwork, please?” “I’ve got your papers in with mine. You don’t have a bag and you don’t need to bulk up your pockets. Be reasonable, KT.” 249

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I’m not a little kid and I’ve been entirely reasonable. Overly reasonable. I hooked my arm in the strap of his gym bag, zipped open the end compartment, and took out the brown envelope. It had his passport and birth certificate along with my things. I put his papers and his new phone in the bag. Thought about zipping it, but didn’t see the point. Folded the envelope around the rest and pocketed it. He swore under his breath, but didn’t stop me. Maybe he thought giving in on the stupid papers would make me more pliant. Now that I had my papers, I could walk away at any moment. Any moment when he couldn’t follow. Because that would be a pain, really. I waited. An hour after lunch, he detoured through the john. I took the stall nearest the door and watched through the door crack until he had his hands full at 250

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the urinal. Then, quietly, I left.

251

Chapter Ten

Atlanta is packed with people. A good share of them are young, blond, and tall. I disappeared among them. I walked until I found an all-night tent revival, with two tables of picnic-type food set up to lure the ragged, the drunks, the dull-eyed and the frightened. I ate the potato salad and the macaroni, and swapped my hot dog for another guy’s potato salad. I let the songs and the impassioned oratory wash past me, and stared at the young man who crouched by my folding chair and confided that Jesus had sent him to reach out to me. 252

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I let him pray with his hand on my knee, and I thought about how he didn’t have a clue. Not that I have either. We’re both lost. Maybe it doesn’t matter. They say Jesus will find you wherever you go. So I’m not lost. I just haven’t been found yet. I dozed for hours in that folding chair, while they sang around me. When they grew quiet, I got up and wandered a few blocks up and a few blocks down and a few blocks over until I found a day-labor company. At 5:30 when the door was unlocked, I was the third person who shuffled inside. Mindless labor is supposed to be good for clearing the head, giving a man time to think through things. A week’s ditch clearing at minimum wage didn’t clear my head at all. Steady work for a change, but it didn’t do me any good. I kept trying to think through what had happened. I kept coming to the point where I’d gone to Turn, so confident he would 253

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get me out of there, and I kept stopping dead when he accepted a stranger’s judgment as better than mine. Everything I depended on... Stop it! Self pity doesn’t help. Say poor, poor, pitiful me once and then move on! But I couldn’t move on. How deep is his contempt for me, that he’d trust a stranger more? That was my roadblock, and I couldn’t cross it. I made it through the week without picking up a beer. Well, I picked up one, but I set it down again. Didn’t buy. Didn’t open. Didn’t lose myself in that way, at least. For all the good it did me. The hair grew back on my crotch, slowly. For the first few days it itched so badly I was tempted to shave it again. On Friday night I stared at the splotched ceiling of a cheap motel, listening to gurgling snores and heavy traffic and fire-station sirens through the thin walls. The room would have taken my entire paycheck plus some for tax, except that I’d split it 254

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with Libby and Jean, who snuggled quietly in the other bed. What am I doing here? Getting away from Turn. Why? To figure out... what? What did I do to make him turn on me? To make him one of those “other” people who wouldn’t hear me out, wouldn’t believe what they did hear? The wave of emotions drowned me, felt like when the hurricane waves came in and my friends and I would go surfing—at night, to avoid the beach cops. Inevitably, I would get caught at least once in the vortex of the crashing waves. That was this feeling: I couldn’t tell up from down; couldn’t breathe; couldn’t see; couldn’t think. Again. Shit. I rode it out, held my forearms against my ribs until the panic ebbed. Okay, this was still getting nowhere. Strip the emotions. Objectively, what happened? Am I flipping out now because the doc drugged me like she had a right to, like I’d already been 255

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committed? I’d shown up with bite marks, fight marks, and wrist-strap marks. A doctor’s first rule used to be “Do no harm,” they say, but these days it’s CMA: Cover My Assets. To cover hers, she would have to get a thorough report on paper. Being a doctor, she’s used to thinking her judgment outweighs anyone else’s. That some people will resist—the medical term for one is uncooperative patient—is pretty much a given in some places, isn’t it? I didn’t like that line-up of facts, but thinking about it didn’t throw me into the vortex. Screw the doc. What keeps fucking with me is Turn didn’t take my side. That thought kicked the ball right past the goalie. Whatever we might disagree on in private, like his insistence on meat being the center of every meal and English being the primary language in movies we saw, or even his habit of cutting the volume on the stereo speakers as soon as he walked in the door, 256

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I’d somehow formed the belief that he would take my side against any third person, no matter what. Because why? My oldest niece would say that with her cute bottom lip trembling. We have it no ice c’eam because why, Uncool Kenny? Because he always had taken my side. He’d defied Father for me. He’d held off an army of cops for me. In the end, he’d even defied Race for me. If I’d put my foot down sooner with Race, he’d probably have backed me up then. If I’d put my foot down. They’d tortured him, starting with one foot. Broken two toes, at least, cracked all his toenails, and burned spots all over the sole. I knew about foot burns, knew the piercing and sickening pain, and that was probably the least of it for him. How much pain had he endured with every step, every uncomplained-of minute? How effectively could even Turn’s mind work, with each of those nerves screaming for his full attention? And then I’d given 257

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him even more to deal with. Too much, maybe. The next day I told the day labor coordinator I needed more money and I’d been around long enough to test for a skilled job. She handed me a test booklet and a pen, so I couldn’t change any answers as I went along. I flipped through the tests. Forget the plumbing. Forget the electrical. Forget the HVAC. Carpentry? Wasn’t that just applied geometry? I read through the hypothetical list of available supplies, the angles and lengths of board wanted, and began a list in the margin. Converted all the lengths to inches as I went, and discovered on page three that if I’d just started filling in answers on page one I’d be fucked. On Tuesday they sent me out as lead carpenter for an eight-man crew working in sight of Stone Mountain. I’d never held a wood-saw in my hand, and I was lead carpenter. It worked out, though. I used my flat pencil to mark all the cuts and number 258

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the pieces before we cut the first board. The guys bitched the first morning, but when the site superintendant handed around $10 scrap-reduction bonuses, the bitching and casual sneers stopped. I wasn’t yo or ese or bubba, but I could hear what everyone was saying and they could hear what I was saying, so we got along. They taught me how to look at the curve and the grain of a board, and why all that mattered. I got better. And the work got done. Friday at lunchtime, the site boss slipped me a forty-dollar bonus and said he might could get me a full-time position. No. The forty dollars, added to the day’s pay, would get me home. Would get me to Savannah, anyhow. I still couldn’t figure out why Turn had turned on me, but if he wanted to talk about it, I was ready to listen. And, if he didn’t want to talk, there was a possibility I could get past it. See if the two of us had 259

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something we could build on besides the expectation he would be my backup in all situations. I swapped one of the crew a five, the last of my small bills, for his phone. I called Turn. Then lost my courage, called 411, and got a number for Turn’s neighbor, Mr. Elstrom. Got his answering machine. Had to be Elstrom’s machine—didn’t give his name but announced, “Don’t knock on my door, if you don’t know my Rottweiler’s name!” “Hayes, and the other one’s Curry. If you get the chance, sir, would you please tell Turner Scott I might be coming through town... maybe Saturday? Depending on how long the bus takes getting there from Atlanta.” I hung up without giving my name. He’d be more likely to give the message if he got interested in prying open the rest of the story. A man like that loves a hint of mystery. An hour after dusk, I got off the shuttle at the office, ready to go in to swap the work ticket for my day’s pay. But the big guy leaning on the wall by the 260

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door lifted his head, and speared me with deep-set silver eyes. Turn. The rest of the crew jostled me good-naturedly, each of them delighted with his $20 bonus, and they streamed past Turn to line up at the pay desk. Turn leaned on the wall, watching me. I couldn’t look away from him. My heart choked me. “Can we talk, KT?” “Yeah.” I shoved my work ticket in my pocket. It wouldn’t expire if I waited for tomorrow to cash it in. If I cared about it tomorrow. “You want to walk a little bit? Nice old garden about a block that way.” “I’d like that.” The wind would be from our right. Considering I hadn’t bothered to wash my jeans or shirt since Wednesday, I walked on the left to keep downwind of Turn. He smelled of the herbal soap and deodorant I picked for him. 261

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We walked silently to the garden, not even brushing elbows. Not even in step. Walking in step with Turn had been a game. A fun one. My legs are quite long, and I could stretch until he just about had to run, but then he’d grab me by the belt and yank me to him, and we’d laugh. The belt I was wearing tonight was stolen. He’d make such a face if he knew. “I guess Ellstrom got hold of you?” “You knew he would. The old man hunted me down at work. Miss Georgie keeps saying he ain’t been right since Vietnam, but the two of them damned sure worked together when it came to finding you. “ And here I was assuming he must have used FBI resources to find me. He was wearing his own shoes again. “Your toes must be better.” “They are. The burns finally scabbed over, too. I only have two days left on the antibiotic. Used the 262

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last pain pill the other day.” I cringed, inwardly. Turn hates pills, hates the idea of being weak enough to need pills of any sort. “How are your teeth?” I hadn’t thought of them in several days. I tongued them, but already knew that if they didn’t hurt they’d be okay. “The loose ones re-seated. I was lucky.” “Good.” We walked on, in step. He didn’t ask if I’d been tested. No reason to ask yet. It would be six months before an HIV test would give a definitive answer. Nor did he ask if I’d taken the morning-after shots. I had—they were free—but if I hadn’t, it was too late now. Knowing how his mind worked, what he’d be thinking about now that he was here beside me, freaked me out some. I was ready to speak, but didn’t know how to start. He started it for me. “You look good. Healthy.” 263

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Healthy? I guess. I felt sand-blasted. I’d taken up my belt a full notch since swiping it from the fire station, and now it was loose again. Without Turn to cook for, to argue over the food with, I didn’t have much interest in eating. What if that was then and this was now? What if whatever we’d had was over, and this was just goodbye? “KT...” We kept walking, at some point falling into step. Walking, we were a team. Nothing to argue about. Nothing to... I don’t know. No decisions to make, or to worry about. “How’s Sweet?” “Temporarily, he’s in a wheelchair. Half a dozen pins in his left leg. He comes in for a few hours every morning.” “Tough man. Tell him I asked about him, please.” “I will.” A bat swooped across our path. We both recoiled, and Turn let out the faintest hint of a grunt. Fuck. Turn had scabbed-over burns on his foot, 264

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and I was making him walk. I cut to the left, where park benches hid among the azaleas. He followed, and when I stopped to lean against a tree, he dropped onto a bench and propped up his foot. “You don’t have to be a tough-man, Turn. You could have said that first garden was far enough.” “I figured you needed to walk.” Well, maybe I did. I looked up through the spotted canopy of trees to the glow of the Atlanta night sky, the sparking building lights two trees and a street’s width away. We weren’t that far from the main Olympic park here. But we’d walked as far as either of us needed to. “KT, can I talk without... Fuck. Can I talk?” “Talk.” He paused a minute, the silence filled in with a bus venting its air brakes. “This summer, when you were there, my blood pressure went down twenty points from the same time last year. The cluster 265

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headaches—I didn’t have any. None. My cholesterol went down too, with all those steamed vegetables you stuffed me with. Now I’m back on blood pressure pills and cholesterol pills, and I’m too young to need either. I need sleeping pills every night or I’ll twist up the sheets and listen to the rats screwing in the attic and wonder about you until dawn. I’m still waking up with shaking hands. I picture you living off turnip juice and brown rice, or some such shit, and I want to find you and feed you real food. Then I need caffeine pills to get to work and stay awake once I’m there. Then I come home exhausted and you’re not there. My headaches are back too—KT, you were good for me.” He stopped, and I wondered what to say to all that. Everybody hurts. No use crying about it. He heaved his bulk to sit upright. I watched him. My eyes burned. I still couldn’t think of anything to say. What if that’s how the story ends? Don’t go away and leave me here alone. Don’t 266

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tell me it’s too late. Wait. He didn’t need to cross half the state to say goodbye. I’m the one who’s fucking this up. He sighed. “I’ll see you get your inheritance.” What inheritance? Was Mother talking about disinheriting me? Her legal bills should be eating up whatever I might have anticipated anyway. Not that she was likely to drop dead anytime soon. Not that it mattered what she left me if she did. “I’m sorry I came and bothered you, KT.” He stood, moving heavily. What are the most useless words in the English language, Kenny? That wasn’t my father. He didn’t have power over me. “Turn? I’m s-s-sor—” Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. “I’m sorry I left like that, left you to worry.” Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. “I’m miserable without you.” He hovered there, barely in sight. Barely out of 267

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reach. “Will you come home with me?” I leaned harder against the tree, trying not to shake so hard. Inhale two three four— Inhale two three four five six— Inhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Wait...what if he just meant he wanted me there for right now? The first time he kissed me, he’d said, I’m here. Is that enough? And it wasn’t, but instead of telling him that right up front, I’d rebuilt my life around him. A castle made of sand. Cemented with promises he’d never made...not to me. Or…what if I was hearing his conscience, not his heart? He’d always acted like he was responsible for me, when he wasn’t. Not by anybody’s protocol. But what if he just felt...I’m twisting this up too much. “What about Race? I can’t match him.” Not in bed. Not in whatever history he and Turn shared. Fuck. His sister was Turn’s best friend. They had private jokes, private looks. What did I have to offer? 268

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“KT…you don’t need to match him. He can’t match you either.” I couldn’t look at him. My fingers picked at treebark. “What happens if he calls you tomorrow?” “He called me yesterday.” “And?” “I chose you.” I pushed myself off the tree. Turn spread his arms and I took one more step to settle against him. He trembled, or I did. Or we both did, holding one another there in the night.

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From the author:

I hope you enjoyed book two of Turner & Turner. To look up my other work, visit me at www. shapeshiftersinlust.com tonight! Amber Green