Murder and Mayhem (23 page)

“Fuck you, Lurch.” A flash of teeth in the man’s scowl was enough for Rook to bite down on a painful yelp, and despite knowing he wouldn’t be able to break the man’s viselike grip, he struggled anyway, then regretted twisting about when a hot shock wave pierced through his shoulder. “Swear to God, if you don’t—”

“Let him go, Stanley,” Archie called out from a black town car idling in the driveway. “You’re hurting the boy.”

“Rather rip his head off,” Stanley muttered barely loud enough for Rook to hear, but he released Rook’s arm, then gave him a slight shove toward the long sedan. “Get in. He wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah, prepare to be disappointed.” Rook shook his sleeve out, twisting his arm around to get the feeling back into his fingers. “’Cause I’m not getting into that car. And you, asshole, owe me an apple.”

“Get into the car, Rook.” His grandfather gestured at his bodyguard. “Give him the keys. He’s afraid we’ll drive off with him.”

“It’s not fear if you know what someone’s going to do. It’s called awareness.” Rook caught the keys Stanley flung at his head. “Apples are inside to the right. And while you’re in there, see if you can’t find coffee for me and the old man.”

Archibald waited until Rook got into the car, then grumbled, “He’s going to kill you one day. It’s like poking a bear.”

“Yeah, as long as you’re alive, he’ll behave. Moment I get a call telling me you’ve keeled over, I’m buying a shotgun and a tank.” He shivered, suddenly grateful for the car’s warm interior, and unzipped the hoodie to get a look at his arm. Sinking down in the soft leather seat next to his grandfather, Rook pushed the fleece away from his shoulder and picked at his bandage. “Fuck, he’s dead meat if I’ve popped these stitches open.”

Blood speckled through the T-shirt he’d taken from Dante’s gym bag, and Rook gently lifted up the edge of the bandage Manny’d insisted he put on. His skin looked like a bad makeup job from an old horror flick, but from what Rook could see, his stitches held.

“Are you all right?” Archie frowned, peering at the shadowed wound on Rook’s arm. “If he hurt you—”

“You’ll fire him? I’m fine, but shit, he could be less of an asshole.” Rook snorted. “What am I saying? You like having a gorilla on tap. I’d have one too if it weren’t so damned much to feed him.”

“You’ve got your cop,” his grandfather sneered. “He hid you well enough.”

“I hid me, Archie,” Rook corrected. Spotting a tissue box on the front seat, he leaned over to pull a few out. Dabbing at the blood on his wound, he glanced over at his grandfather. “That how you found me? You had someone tailing Dante?”

“Odd. You used to call him Montoya. A lot can change in a day, can’t it?” Archibald shifted in his seat, running his fingers over the silver knob on his cane. “And no, nothing so old-fashioned as following him. I had my people tracking his credit card.”

“I paid for the room. With burners. Okay, he gave them the card to use, but it was still mine.”

“He bought a coffee and pastry at the lounge in the lobby this morning. Ah, here is the coffee.” The elderly man leaned over to hit the window switch as Stanley approached the car with two coffee cups swallowed up in his massive hands. Archibald took the cups, then passed one over to Rook. “Thank you, Stanley. If you don’t mind, Rook and I will sit here for a while and talk.”

“Hotel’s going to ask you to move this beast. You’re in the drop-off area. And I didn’t get my goddamned apple.” Rook slid the cup into a space on the console between the seats. “Seriously, why are you here?”

“I was concerned after you left the hospital, and then I get a report you were struck by a car. What did you expect me to do? Wait for someone to call and tell me you were dead?” Archie looked away, staring at the passing traffic. “I’m not used to this… worrying. Your mother I wrote off years ago. But you… I’m trying here, boy.”

They were
too
much alike. Rook knew it. He hated being controlled as much as his grandfather needed to control. Still, there was something darker than anger in Archibald’s expression, and when Rook brushed his fingers over his grandfather’s trembling hand, the old man blinked furiously at the dampness in his glittering eyes.

“I’ll not cry over you, damn it,” Archibald snapped. “If you’re going to leave, then leave. Or stay. Just don’t play cat-and-mouse games with me, boy. You’ll lose every time. I can—”

“You should have stopped right after the game comment, Archie,” Rook sighed. “Once you slide it into threats, it goes cattywampus, and you lose all your momentum. You’ve always got to take it a bit too far.”

Silence reigned in the car for a minute, then another, punctuated only by Archie’s noisy slurping. Rook broke the quiet first, rubbing at his injured arm as he spoke. “I was going to call you. I’ve been a bit out of it.”

“The clinic report said you were dehydrated—”

“Really, Archie?” Rook rubbed at his face. “You and me, we’ve got to get something straightened out. Actually, a bunch of things. The first being, you’ve got to get your nose out of my shit.”

“Why should I when you don’t tell me what’s going on?” Archie snarled back, any sign of the trembling old man wiped away. “I’m surprised you’ve lived as long as you have being alone. You’re a disaster looking for a place to explode, boy.”

Rook reached for the door handle. “I don’t need your help to live, old man—”

“Sure as shit needed me when you asked for a lawyer now, didn’t you?”

“And we’re back to
fuck you
, Archie.” He opened the door to slide out when Archie grabbed Rook’s wrist.

“Don’t. Just…
don’t
.” Archie tugged gently on Rook’s arm. “I’m not… good at this. Goddamn it, I don’t know what to do with you.”

“You don’t have to do anything with me, Archie,” Rook replied, dropping back into the seat and closing the door. “You just have to let me go and trust that I’ll come back. Because I’ll always come back, Arch. You just have to let me decide when.”

“And if you don’t come back? Like your mother?”

“I’d like to think I’m a better person than Beanie,” Rook quipped, getting a smile out of his grandfather’s dour mouth. “Just… don’t hold on so tight, Archie. I can’t… breathe when you do.”

“And your cop?” Archie tilted his head up, pursing his lips. “You ran to him when you needed someone. Instead of coming to me, your own flesh and blood.
He
hold you loose enough?”

“We’ll see, old man. For right now, yeah.” Patting his grandfather’s leg, Rook sighed again. “But that’s just for right now.”

“What do you mean you left him there alone?” Dante struggled to keep his phone tucked in between his neck and shoulder as he dug a room key out of his pocket. “Manny, he’s not—”

“I can’t believe this film won one Oscar, much less two! The Academy were idiots.”

The voice greeting Dante’s entrance wasn’t the husky charm of the man he’d picked up off a dive motel’s floor the night before. And the matching pair of odd-hued eyes glancing at him before turning back to the television certainly wasn’t what Dante expected to greet him after a long day of interviewing con artists and rescuing gray Persians.

Rook lay in a boneless sprawl across one end of the couch while his grandfather perched on the other side, his elbows sticking out on either side as he leaned on a cane. Half-empty bowls of popcorn and M&M’s had replaced the delicate swirling fish statue on the room’s coffee table, and the large screen television flickered with an old black-and-white movie Dante didn’t recognize.

“I can’t believe that woman was Glinda,” Archie groused, digging out a handful of buttery popcorn. Chewing around a mouthful, he waved at the screen. “She looked better in color.”

“That was filmed after this.” Rook gave Dante a negligent wave. “Well, this one came before Oz. There are two sequels filmed after. Without Grant, but they spliced some shots of him into the second one.”

“That all you do every day?” A tap of Archie’s cane drew Rook’s attention. “Watch movies?”

“Pays the bills,” he replied. “And before you say that you’ll pay my bills, remember the ticks you’ve got for grandchildren and how well
they
turned out.”

“Alex isn’t bad.” Archie made a face, nearly identical to his grandson’s, and Dante swallowed a chuckle.

“Alex also owns his own comic book store and doesn’t trot over to you every time he stubs his toe,” Rook pointed out. “Pretend I’m like Alex. Except much more of an asshole.”

“Isn’t that the truth. Montoya! In or out?” Archibald barked over the actors’ banter. “We’ve already had someone call security because we were being too loud. Said they could hear us guffawing or something. Through the walls, supposedly. What kind of shit hotel do you bring my grandson to where people can hear through the walls?”

“Lies. The walls are soundproofed. You left the door open.” Rook reached for a water bottle, and Dante saw him wince. “Fuck—”

“Turn it off. Kiss your grandfather good-bye, and time to get into a hot shower to loosen up those muscles,
cuervo
.” Dante strolled across the room to stand in front of the television. Turning it off, he held his hands up to the moaning complaints coming from the couch.

“He calls you tequila?” Archie stood up, leaning heavily on his cane.

Dante stepped forward to help the older man up and caught a disgusted look from both men. Rook stood, then headed to the door, slapping Dante’s ass as he went by.

“I’m old. Not dead. The day another man carries me, there’d better be a coffin around my body, boy.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be courteous. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He stepped back, giving Archie room to get out. “And
cuervo
? It just means crow.”

“Because his name is Rook?” Archie gave Dante the evil eye as he toddled by. “What’s wrong with just calling him by his name? Something the matter with it?”

“Old man, stop stirring up crap.” Rook opened the door for his grandfather. “Want me to walk you down?”

“Did you just miss the part where I don’t need any help? Besides, you’re banged up to shit. Goddamned cop can’t even take care of you. Don’t know why you even want him around.” Archibald’s cane slapped the door as he reached out to squeeze Rook’s arm before he walked past.

“Because he’s got a really nice dick and knows what to do with it. I plan on seeing what his ass is like next.” Rook winked at Dante’s exasperated groan. “What? It’s not like he doesn’t know I’m gay, Montoya. Not a big surprise.”

“Jesus, the two of you—you deserve each other, I swear. Dear God.” Dante gaped. The casual, caustic banter between Rook and his grandfather was a far cry from what he and Manny had between them. “I can’t even imagine saying that to my grandpa.”

“Well, we like things honest between us, Montoya,” Archibald declared. “Call me later, brat. If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow, I’m sending Stanley after you.”

“I look forward to sending him back to you in a thousand little boxes,” Rook shot back. “I might even pee on them first. Night, old man. Tell that naked mole rat you call a bodyguard to drive safe. I’m not ready to take over yet. Give me a few months. Then he can kill you.”

Rook shut the door behind his grandfather, then turned to face Dante, a familiar cocky grin plastered on his handsome face. They stared at one another, and Dante studied the man he’d taken to bed the night before. As intimate as he’d been with Rook’s lean body, he knew little about the man inside. A few tidbits and dribbles, but other than what he’d learned investigating Rook’s crimes, Dante knew practically nothing.

And from what he could see, Rook rather liked it that way.

“Yeah, he stopped by once he found out you used your credit card downstairs,” Rook tossed off casually, walking by Dante toward the couch. He tossed the candies and popcorn into a bowl, swishing them together, then put it on the kitchen counter. “He put a tracer on you. Asshole. Told him not to do it anymore—”

Rubbing his face, Dante mumbled, “Does
anyone
in your family follow the law? Or should we just build a prison around the old guy’s house and call it a day?”

“Hey, I told him to cut it out.” Rook grabbed the back of the couch. “Shit, okay. That hurt.”

“Let’s get you on the bed. You can shower later. Stretch out, and I’ll bring you some meds. When was the last time you took something?” Dante slung his arm around Rook’s waist, easing under to take his weight. “Hold on, do you want—”

“Just fucking get me to the bed, ’Toya.” He hobbled forward, forcing Dante to keep up. “Sat too long. Lying down isn’t a bad thing. Meds were hours ago. Right before I kicked Manny out to go play with his friends.”

“He was supposed to stay with you.” Dante eased Rook down onto the pillows. “Don’t go anywhere—unlike the last ten times I told you that.”

The pill count in the bottle was higher than Dante would have liked, even with Rook’s distrust of a full dose. Talking to Rook was useless. Past experience told Dante he’d be in for a fight, and short of holding the man down to pill him like a cat, there wasn’t any way for Dante to get more in him.

“Could crush it up in water….” Dante glanced over his shoulder at the man lying on the bed behind him. Rook had one arm over his eyes, but his toes were kneading the air. “Speaking of cats. What are you thinking? Drug him and that’s it. He’s gone.”

Oddly enough, the thought of Rook walking out one final time left Dante unsettled. More than unsettled, disturbed. He came out of the bathroom and stared down at the mess of a man he’d fallen in with.

There was something to be said about lust. He’d slaked his thirst for men so rarely that when Rook crossed his path again, Dante was overwhelmed with the intensity of his want. Yet once wasn’t enough to slake the simmering heat inside of him, not where Rook was concerned.

Rook’s green eye peered out from under his arm, finding Dante in the room’s growing shadows. “You’re looming again.”

“I tend to do that around you for some reason. Here, sit up and take these. There’s some Tiger Balm I can put on you if you’re sore. Might be better than a shower.” Dante sat on the bed as Rook downed the pills. “So you kicked Manny out and got your grandfather here instead?”