Chapter 2 A Pond of Sand #2
If Burton was one of the scariest motherfuckers Eric had ever met, Jason Constance had trained that man, and he was also a scary motherfucker. Both of them were military, Eric was positive. Some sort of special operation. But also both gay and living out here with their boyfriends.
He should have been looking for munchkins and a field of poppies while he was here.
“They both own this place?” he asked uncertainly.
“Well, Burton bought our house from a real-estate company that probably fainted, and then Jason supplied power and water and got services running, and then they both pooled their resources—don’t ask.
I’m sure you don’t want me to know about your money.
Same. But this place is theirs. So you ask, you pay them whatever they think is fair, and, you know, maybe don’t fill in your pool.
Or if you do, make it available, but seriously…
.” He grimaced. “Jason keeps his full, and since he and Cotton are only here for the weekends—”
“Anybody can use it,” Eric said, nodding. “You told me that. Does it get used a lot?”
Ernie snorted softly. “Yes. We all use it. Even Sonny and Ace, on their day off.”
They ran a garage across the highway from a filling station/Subway/mini-mart.
They had a little house on the same property, and a tiny little dog—which is probably where Eric had gotten the analogy—and Eric got the impression that they’d started this little gathering in the desert and were quite surprised to find they were now surrounded by/responsible for other people.
They seemed to have just wanted to run their little garage and live their little lives, but Ace was meant for more than that, and he couldn’t seem to squelch that sense of responsibility, of leadership, in himself.
Of all the people Eric had met in this little corner of the desert, it wasn’t the scary military motherfuckers that Eric was afraid of dealing with. It was Ace.
“So their day off is….” he said, not sure if he’d be at the pool because of Sonny or not at the pool because of Ace.
And of course, he’d forgotten he was dealing with a psychic.
“Ace isn’t going to kill you in the pool,” Ernie said, obviously amused. “If he didn’t like you, he would have told you to move on and left it at that.”
Eric grimaced. Sure, Ace would have done that. But given that he’d seen the results of Ace’s work the day he’d arrived here, he was still a little wary.
Ernie let out a sigh. “Look, I can see that you still don’t quite get us. But please believe me when I say you have to be a real scumbag to have to worry about one of us offing you. I mean, I’m all-but-married to a government assassin. I was supposed to be a hit.”
“He couldn’t do it?” Eric asked, surprised. After meeting Burton, he didn’t think anything could interfere with the man’s agenda.
“Well, he was studying me as a hit, and he realized that it wasn’t that I was dangerous to the population, but what I knew was very dangerous to the man who’d tried to train me to help create assassins.”
“Oh! Karl Lacey?” Eric’s old unit, Corduroy, had been going to hook up with Admiral Lacey’s little psychosocial experiment—with an emphasis on psycho. He saw the expression on Ernie’s face and said, “God rot his soul in hell.”
Ernie nodded. “Yup. That’s the fucker. Burton figured out I could bring Lacey down, so he and Jason worked an undercover op to do that. We had some help, and it’s not all wrapped up yet, but yeah. Burton and Jason both have a conscience—and a skill set. Same with Ace and same with Jai.”
“The, uhm….”
“Giant bald Russian enforcer,” Ernie said. “Yeah—hi, Jai!”
“You are here,” said the giant bald Russian enforcer from Eric’s doorway. “I thought so. George is at work, and I am going to the garage. You are coming?”
Ernie grunted. “Yeah. I told Ace I’d work today. I wanted to show Eric how to care for the cats so he could be—”
“You wish to indoctrinate him into our happy neighbor assassin cult,” Jai said, and his broad face was so intimidating, Eric had trouble deciding if he was kidding or not. Only a twitch of his full mouth gave it away. “No need for the high pressure. You had him at cinnamon rolls.”
Eric was going to protest that he wasn’t that easy, but his mouth was full, and he didn’t want to rush the cinnamon orgasm that was about to explode in his palate.
Ah yes. He could breathe now.
Okay, then.
He gazed at Ernie and Jai in pure bafflement and said, “If I’d known my soul could be bought so cheaply, I might have settled for petty theft and assault before graduating to full-out assassin.”
Ernie guffawed like the twenty-something he appeared to be, and Jai’s laughter shook the RV. From their crate, the kittens purred contentedly, and Eric decided they would be fine in the mild temperatures while he took a tour of Ernie’s house.
OH, THIS was a mistake.
The house was… lovely. It had an open-plan kitchen/dining room/family area, a glass-bricked hallway to three bedrooms, one of which was filled with cat trees and cat beds (and cat boxes on the tiled floor), and the other of which was relatively cat free, but which had a carpet and a king-size bed.
The third was used as a den, with a desk and a computer and a guest bed.
Ernie obviously lived in the spacious kitchen, which had restaurant-sized appliances, including a mixer, a blender, a deep fryer (for donuts, he explained proudly), and three ovens.
Much of it was done in white tile with red or wood accents, and while it wasn’t to Eric’s taste, it was….
Luxurious. Very individual. And obviously decorated for the people who lived there, including the cat fur, which some people might have objected to but Eric thought was the perfect finishing touch.
The fact that he knew people who agreed with him on that seemed more of a miracle than the assassin thing.
“So,” he said, after getting the tour and memorizing all of the places cat food needed to go and how often the many boxes needed to be cleaned. “Why are these houses here again?”
Ernie let out a laugh. “Well, the nearest we could figure was that when Karl Lacey was running his illegitimate military ops not far from here, an enterprising contractor caught wind of it and thought, ‘Hey—officers live off campus!’ So he started building an officer-quality neighborhood. But Lacey was off-book—and crazy—so no officers. By the time he was killed, the contractor was freaking out because he was about to take a bath. So when Burton offered to buy the one place, the contractor practically gave it away—and let on that the power, gas, and water hookups were partially completed through the military base. Jason heard about it and thought, ‘Hey, that could be handy, being gay and in the military and stuck out here in hell,’ and since it was going for a song—”
“He arranged for the hookups and bought the property,” Eric filled in.
Ernie shrugged. “Burton, Jason, Jason, Burton….” He held his hand up and wobbled it back and forth.
“See, the desert is sort of an amazing place. Everything here has to fight to survive. This cul-de-sac is like water from a cactus, or maternal instinct from a coyote. It’s designed to give shelter to the creatures who belong here. ”
Eric swallowed and glanced out Ernie’s window to his RV, parked in the driveway across the street. “You think so?” he asked, rather moved by Ernie’s poetry.
“You know who Karl Lacey was?” Ernie asked.
Eric swallowed grimly, remembering how Corduroy had seemed a decent place to work with a skill set like his, and then it had fallen apart when Lacey had signed on to give “perfect assassins” to his boss.
“I left,” he said through a dry throat, “shortly after he entered the picture. I wasn’t surprised to hear things went to shit with him, but I don’t know who killed him.”
Ernie chuckled. “You’ve met him,” he said, giving Jai a waggle of his eyebrows that made Jai crack up. “But unless you stay here for a month or two, I won’t tell you who it was.”
Eric’s breath caught. A puzzle. He hated puzzles. They drove him insane. It was how he got good at his trade. Every death was a perfect puzzle, the kind that, when assembled appropriately, was so seamless only the most discerning minds could figure out how it was put together.
And Ernie had just put a puzzle in his lap and told him he had the key.
He glanced back at the RV and sighed. “How long?” he said after a moment. “How long would it take for the sale to go through?”
“A month,” Ernie said without thought. “I’ll tell Burton you’re putting in an offer, you can have the keys in a month. The hookups will be fine until then, and the weather will stay mild, so the kittens will be safe in there, unless you’d rather leave them in my place when you’re going somewhere.”
Eric frowned at the RV again and thought about the awkwardness of driving it on errands—or even to Baker, which was the nearest town that could be considered a town.
“I’d have to—”
“You can use whatever I’m driving while I’m at work,” Ernie said brightly. “And ask Sonny and Ace to get you a vehicle.”
Eric tried to make that fit. “They could get me an SUV?”
Jai—who worked as a mechanic for the two men—snorted. “Ernie has already told them to be on the lookout for one.”
“Are they a dealership?”
Ernie laughed. “No,” he said. “Not even close.”
Eric Christiansen turned to Jai, hoping for some hints, but the big man only smirked. “I… I don’t understand.”
Jai shrugged. “Understand or don’t understand. Today you can drive my Cadillac if you need to shop. Drop us off at the garage and go on your way.” He frowned. “But maybe do leave the kittens in Ernie’s cat room. Ernie will shut the door and give them a quiet place.”
And like that, Eric’s day, which had started out peaceful and rather… unfocused, had purpose.
“Let me go shower and—”
“Shower here,” Ernie said decisively. “I know you’ve got the posh RV, but seriously, a real shower will give you an orgasm just by not bumping your head.”
Eric slow blinked. “Let me get my clothes and the kittens,” he said with dignity, wondering how Ernie knew he liked to, uhm… in the shower.
“I’m psychic,” Ernie said complacently. “But you should hurry. Ace and Sonny’s will get busy in an hour.”
As Eric strode off—or fled—he was mentally going through the clothes he’d brought with him in the RV and wondering what he had clean, and Ernie’s call of “And bring your laundry!” only sent him scurrying along more quickly.
How had he ended up here again?