Night Swimming #3
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Ace said. “Okay, then. See? It’s not all bad. Now you meet me at the place—take some back roads. You know where the back roads are?”
Brady had to laugh. “Out by where all the illegal street racing takes place?” he asked.
Ace cackled some more. “Our boy ain’t stupid. All right, then. Where’s all your cop friends?”
“I don’t know. They’d just figured out I’d left the hospital when I got my department issue back to the station house.”
“Now them boys is stupid,” Ace said grimly. “Alrighty. Let me know if you got any on your tail. Otherwise, stick to the plan.”
“Sure,” Brady said, and he realized that, while thin at the moment, there was still a plan in place. And it involved a higher power. And an attempt to restore things back to order.
And sanctuary.
He was going to have to call it good.
AN HOUR and a half later, he was… well, wearing a borrowed pair of board shorts in a stranger’s pool.
After the conversation with Ace, his brain had sort of checked out.
He remembered the gas station, and the way Eric had shown up with a beat-up Toyota with disintegrating seats and told him to hop in.
Ernie was there too, driving a sweet little Kia that Brady hadn’t seen before, his hand out for Brady’s keys.
“I’ll take the clothes and some takeout to the neighborhood,” he said to Eric. “Get him to the pool, make him take a breath. He’s in shock.”
“I can see that,” Eric said. “Poor man.”
“Well, not every day you realize your entire livelihood is trying to kill you,” Ernie said, patting Brady on the shoulder.
“What’s everybody else doing?” Eric asked.
“We’re gonna talk some story,” Ernie said vaguely. “If he needs a bedroom to sleep in, wait until the first person gets home—we’ve all got spares.”
“My couch is quite comfortable when it comes to that,” Eric said, and Brady heard a note to his voice, a smoothness, and whatever he wasn’t saying, it made Ernie smirk.
“The couch. Sure. Look, wherever he ends up, he needs to be bright and shiny by Monday. We’ll have some ideas by Monday.”
“Monday sounds fine,” Eric told him. “I’ve got more than enough food to last until then.”
Ernie snorted. “You are so transparent. My God, you’re lucky you survived this long.”
Eric’s next sentence reverberated around in Brady’s skull. “I survived this long working for the finer things in life. I’d say Mr. Carnegie fits the bill.”
“Not going to argue,” Ernie agreed. “Now get him out of here before his brains start rolling out his ears.”
And that had been that.
Eric had taken him into the RV and told him to change, and then had led him—practically by the hand—across the cul-de-sac from where the camper was parked and, after unlatching a gate that wasn’t locked at all, led him back to this glorious, enormous jewel of a pool in the desert.
Brady had turned to him in bewilderment. “What is this even doing here?”
“I understand all the houses have them,” Eric said, smiling at the small hot tub, a soft faux concrete under their flip-flops—Brady was wearing borrowed flip-flops. How did that even happen?
“Have pools surrounded by desert plants and a white gravel walkway?” The landscaping really was prime, Brady thought.
“Well, have pools. I guess they came to an agreement, regarding water conservation. The people who live in this house keep up the pool, and everybody else can use it as long as they do so conscientiously.”
“Does that even work?” Brady asked.
Eric lifted a shoulder. “I think… I think you’ll find these neighbors are a little tighter than most.”
And suddenly Brady was mad. “What does that even mean? Do you think I haven’t figured that out yet?
” he snapped. “Do you know that at five to two this afternoon, I was called out to a bank robbery, and I was a little afraid, ’cause those are dangerous, but it’s part of the job, and now my life has fallen apart?
And all these people who are a ‘little tighter than most’ either saved my life or committed crimes, and I can’t tell which? ”
Brady’s voice rose and fell on that last note, and Eric gazed at him in sympathy and then shoved him into the pool.
The water was cool enough to be refreshing. It closed over Brady’s head, and for a moment, with the lights from the pool sconces glowing above him, he was in a peaceful halo, and all of his confusion was silence.
His lungs started to burn, and he kicked upward, realizing his flip-flops were floating on the surface of the pool, and the T-shirt Eric had given him as a cover was getting soddenly tangled around his arms and chest.
With a gasp he swam to the edge, set the shoes down, and then removed the shirt, laying it out so it could dry a little before they—what? Hung it up in Eric’s bathroom?
“What do you do for laundry?” he asked, this minor detail suddenly majorly important.
“Well, I’m planning to use Ernie and Burton’s—Ernie gave me permission. And then, after I clear escrow, I can move into the house I’ve parked in front of, and I assume I’ll have my own units.”
Brady blinked water out of his eyes to peer at him. “You’re… you’re moving in. You’re putting down roots?”
Eric lifted a shoulder, and again, that sad look appeared. “That was the hope. I suppose we’ll have to see how your situation falls out before I know for sure.”
Brady gave a bewildered little “Huh,” and then rested his cheek on his arms on the cool concrete edge of the pool.
For his part, Eric stood and stripped off the clean madras shirt he’d put on over his board shorts and laid out their two towels with every bit as much aplomb as he’d likely use at some sort of expensive, elite resort.
Brady hovered in the pool and watched him, his body weightless, his head empty.
On automatic he pushed off from the side of the pool and took off for the other end, flipping when he hit the far side and swimming back, his freestyle coming to his muscles as automatically now as it had when he’d been in high school.
The purity and healing of the water sluiced over him, and he kept stroking until his lungs burned and his muscles strained, and still, again and again and again—
He was brought up short by a solid body in the water, one that took the impact of their collision and floated backward, arms around his shoulders.
“What—” he gasped, but that was about all he could manage, he was panting so hard.
“Shh….” Eric-who-should-be-Charlie’s arms came around his shoulders and squeezed until the anger and resistance that had kept him going drained out of him.
“What—” he tried again, and Eric’s long, lean, elegant body was still there, up against his, the relative heat of the water in the cool desert night proving as much a bath for the senses as the glowing lights under their feet and the blanket of stars overhead.
“Forty-five minutes,” Eric murmured. “I draw the line at being ignored during a date at forty-five minutes.”
Brady’s limbs were suddenly wet-cement heavy, and if Eric hadn’t been there to support him, he might have simply gone under.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“It’s fine,” Eric told him, cupping his skull and nudging his head onto a firm, smooth-skinned shoulder. “It’s not every day you learn your job is actively trying to kill you.”
“I’m so mad,” Brady told him, and it was the most honest thing he’d said all day. “I-I don’t know how I got here.”
Eric grunted. “You could tell me how over dinner,” he offered pleasantly, like this was the ordinary date Brady had suspected that morning.
Brady frowned. “Dinner?”
“Ace came by with your clothes while you were swimming,” Eric told him. “They picked up some Thai food for us.” He gave a sweet little smile. “I believe this was Sonny’s idea. Something about how Thai food was sophisticated like we were.”
Brady swallowed, thinking about the slender, rabbity auto mechanic. “That kid… that kid’s got a story,” he said thoughtfully.
Eric’s snort told him that was an understatement. “I think everybody in Ace and Sonny’s circle does,” he said. “Including you and me.”
Brady nodded. “I have the feeling,” he said carefully, “that I could have a dozen perfectly normal dates with you and never know your whole story.”
Those amazing ice-blue eyes opened and closed slowly, as though assimilating.
“I would have to trust you in extraordinary ways for that,” he said softly.
“Perhaps we should keep our conversation light, or even focused on how to keep you alive. My secrets are… unnecessary to haul into the light tonight.”
Brady closed his eyes, enjoying the closeness of this fine male body, the comfort of somebody who gave a damn that he hadn’t died today.
“Okay,” he said, lost. “Let’s have Thai food.
Let’s pretend it’s okay to walk into your job one morning only to find out everybody wants you dead by the afternoon. ”
Eric pulled back and started for the steps out of the pool, snagging Brady’s hand as he went. “But is that really how it happened?” he asked, tugging imperiously. “Did you really have no idea they wanted you dead?”
Brady swallowed and allowed himself to be towed. In his head was a montage—a series of moments from the last week, starting with the look of contempt on Arlen Cuthbert’s face when he’d snatched the phone out of Brady’s hands.
Maybe he’d known. Maybe that’s why Ace’s offer of backup had felt so real.
“All the robbers survived,” he murmured as Eric wrapped a towel around him.
He resisted the urge to step into his arms. This moment was sheer romance—he wanted to fall into it, fall into the handsome man with the false name like he’d fallen into the jewel blue of a stranger’s pool.
But he was a practical man. Even his one big hobby was born in practicality, because everybody needed a vehicle, right?
But then, some men wanted a veh-i-cle. Or in this case, a vee-ickle.
He swallowed, and found he’d leaned nearer anyway. Eric’s fingertips danced around his hairline, pushing back the strands as they tried to fall into his eyes.