Author's Preface
K ellen’s hand was half-raised to knock a second time when the door to unit 232 -A suddenly opened a crack. There was a security latch on the door, and it was engaged.
“Who is it?” Alexei did not show himself in the three-inch gap between the door and door frame, but the voice was his.
Pounding. For the next ten seconds, it was all Kellen was conscious of: the steady pounding in his chest. The thought crossed his mind that he might as well walk away now. What he had come here for was done.
“Hello?” That voice.
Kellen swallowed on a dry throat. “It’s Jay.”
Ten seconds of silence passed. “Are you alone?”
Kellen’s brow wrinkled faintly. He glanced down the hallway. “Yes…?”
More quiet. “What are you doing here, Jay?”
Kellen licked his lips. He glanced back down the hallway toward the balcony. Leave. Just leave. There was no reason to stay. “I need to talk to you about something.” Kellen bit his tongue on the last word. He glanced to the left. Shut his eyes for a moment. What the fuck?
There was another ten seconds of quiet. Then the sound of the security latch opening. The hotel door swung open just wide enough to pass through.
Mentally trying to reset his composure, Kellen stepped inside. The door shut slowly behind him, and a lock clicked.
Alexei looked different. It was the first conclusion to hit Kellen—milliseconds before the details registered.
He was pale. There were bruises on him. Bruises on his neck, pressure points from the grip of a hand. More grip marks on his arms. An ugly contusion on the front of his right shoulder—red and purple. He was standing like he was in pain. Like he couldn’t stand up straight without making it worse. His clothing was different: a simple black tank top and loose dark sweatpants.
There was a tattoo just below Alexei’s collar bone that Kellen had never seen before. A barcode. An actual barcode. Tattooed into his skin, the silver chain of his necklace crossing a portion of it.
Kellen found himself staring at the tattoo for another five seconds, sheer disbelief stalling any coherent thought.
Alexei moved wordlessly to the king-size bed in the middle of the room. He lay down slowly beside a tangle of bedsheet and blanket and dropped his head onto a pillow. Then, barely louder than a whisper: “What?”
The jewelry was gone from his lower lip. The only jewelry he was still wearing was the necklace. Everything else was gone, leaving him looking stripped. Bare. He still wore the blindfold.
“Are you sick?” Kellen spoke finally. His heart was still racing, but everything from before had dissipated to the background.
Alexei’s lips pressed. He was silent for several seconds. “I was trying to rest.”
Kellen didn’t move. “What are you sick with?”
“It’s not contagious.” He didn’t smile.
That barcode tattoo. Permanent ink. He always wore halter tops, that’s why Kellen had never seen it before. He hid it on purpose—the same way he hid the restraint scars that were now fully exposed on his bare wrists. Red, raw. Bad enough that they might have bled mere hours ago.
“I’m going to hurt you so bad, you won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” the voice in that dream had said. Swan.
Kellen’s hand swept the lower half of his face.
“What do you need to talk about?” Alexei asked.
“You said the dancers come from precarious situations so they’ll want to stay.” Kellen’s back softly hit the wall behind him. “You were a dancer. What was your precarious situation?”
Alexei turned his head against the pillow and let out a small breath. His lips closed for a moment. “What does that have to do with our deal?”
Nothing. Undeniably: nothing. Kellen tried to swallow and couldn’t over the lump in his throat. “Do you need medical attention?” he whispered.
“No.” The answer came too fast. Alexei’s fingers twitched on the mattress. “What did you come here to talk about?”
Kellen didn’t respond for almost a minute. His mind kept freezing. Stalling on the abuse marks on Alexei’s body. That tattoo. No one did this willingly. No one allowed their body to be marked and used like this willingly. He had the power to take a man’s life, but he was powerless to control his own.
“I won’t be at the raid tonight,” Kellen spoke finally, his voice far quieter than he intended.
“‘Raid’?” A weakly amused smile touched Alexei’s lips. But then his face sobered, and he sat up. “You won’t be there at all?”
“Correct.”
“Fuck you.” Simple, brief. Alexei was silent for several seconds. “When the hell can you make it?”
“I can’t,” Kellen responded. “The detective on the case won’t let me be there. Liability reasons.”
Alexei sank slowly back against the pillow. “Then our deal ends here.”
“What?” Kellen pushed off the wall. He was several steps toward the bed before he even realized it. “What do you mean? I’m still going to communicate to them what you give me—I just can’t be at the locations.”
“Oh, so I’m supposed to trust some nameless, faceless cops I’ve never fucking met?” He was speaking to the ceiling, arms resting at his sides. “Hell no. Fucking cops shoot and ask questions later. They’ll shoot before they know who they’re shooting.”
Kellen’s brow dipped. “You think me being there is going to change that?”
“I know it will.”
“You’ve clearly never contracted with a jurisdiction before.”
“Eastland―” He broke off. One second. Two. “Jay.”
Silence held the room for what felt like thirty seconds. Kellen passed a hand across his lips. “Do you know my first name?”
“No.” Too abrupt. Almost certainly a lie. But then, like Alexei was afraid Kellen might give it, “I don’t want to know.”
More silence. “How do you know my last name?”
Alexei’s lips parted, silent for another few seconds. “You don’t want to know.” A whisper.
The dreams. Impossible. There was no way this boy was also having dreams that made him know things he shouldn’t know. Right? “Tell me how you know, and I’ll be at the location tonight.”
Alexei’s face turned toward him. “You can make a promise like that?”
“Give me the address to the place now, and I’ll make it happen.”
Silence. Then, “There’s a notch at the top of your left ear.”
Kellen’s brow quirked.
A small breath escaped Alexei’s chest. “It’s a mis-healed injury from a bullet that almost hit you in the head. And your facial structure…your cheekbones, eye shape…height…I knew someone who told me all those things about someone with the last name Eastland.”
The cold of the air conditioning seemed to sink into Kellen’s skin all at once. “You knew someone who knew me? Someone I worked with on the Lexington op?”
“A relative of yours.”
Kellen was silent for several seconds, heart quietly pounding in his chest. “A biological relative?”
Alexei nodded slowly.
“Someone biologically related to me? ” A wave of tiny muscle twitches ran down Kellen’s back. He shook his head. “No. That’s impossible.”
There was a brief silence. Alexei exhaled like he was done with the conversation.
“No, that’s impossible. I don’t know my biological relatives, and you just happened to run into one? One who knows me by the name Eastland? I’m not related to any Eastlands. I married into the name, and I sure as hell wasn’t in contact with any biological relatives after I got married. So who actually told you who I am? Who do you know that I worked with on the Lexington op ten years ago?”
Silence.
“You are completely full of shit,” Kellen breathed before moving for the door.
“Tell your wife to suck it off more often,” Alexei responded. “An escort thought you’d taken celibacy vows.”
Kellen’s feet froze to the ground. Spine prickling, he reached for the doorknob. Behind him, he heard Alexei sit up again.
“Are you going to be there or not?”
“The fuck do you even care,” Kellen murmured. His hand was on the doorknob, seconds from turning it.
“I’ll be there.”
Kellen froze.
“This one is different. I need to be there when your friends get there.” A pause. “ 338 Sycamore.”
Images of the shot-out cab of that box truck flashed through Kellen’s mind. That feeling. That feeling in those moments while he thought Alexei was in that truck.
If the dreams were real, was the part about death real, too?
Alexei looked so weak sitting on that bed. The sickly shade of his skin, pale lips, the marks of brutality all over his body. His arms slumped at his sides, hands resting empty in his lap. He was almost more beautiful without all the jewelry and dress-up.
“I’ll be there,” Kellen whispered. He left the room.
Keeping his face low, Kellen headed for the elevators. He would go to the police station and talk to Marcus face-to-face. But first, he would stop by his apartment. If the police couldn’t arm him, he would arm himself.