Chapter Fourteen #2
A man across the bar, big, broad, bear energy even if Nero couldn't confirm the species, leaned in and said something to Amani.
Something friendly, based on the smile. Amani smiled back but the smile didn't reach his eyes and when the man extended his hand for a fist bump, Amani looked at the hand for a fraction of a second too long before he completed the gesture.
It was the hesitation of someone running a calculation in real time: is this hand safe?
Will this hand do what hands are supposed to do, or will it do the other thing?
The calculation took less than a second. The fist bump happened. The bear laughed and moved on. And Amani stood very still for a moment, his fist still raised, looking at his own hand like it had done something without his permission.
Nero finished his drink and set it down. "Another?" Amani asked, already reaching.
"No. I'm good." He paused. "You're doing alright."
Amani blinked. "What?"
"You're doing alright," Nero repeated. "You flinched twice that I saw and you haven't come out from behind the bar since I got here and your feet are probably killing you right now.
But you're here. And the drinks are good.
And the guy on stool six is drinking a martini that you made exactly the way he likes it without him having to ask. So. You're doing alright."
Amani stared at him. The amber eyes were wide and raw and for a second the armor was completely gone and underneath it was someone young and tired and terrified who had come back to the only place that felt like his and was holding on to the bar with both hands because letting go meant admitting that the ground underneath him had shifted.
Then the armor came back. Fast, smooth, practiced.
"Thanks," Amani said. His voice was even. "For the rescue. Really. I never said it properly."
"You don't have to say it properly. You don't have to say it at all."
"Well. I said it. So." A beat. Then, with the air of someone completing a transaction: "You're not really my type, by the way. In case you were wondering."
Nero raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't."
"Good. Because I tend to go for—"
"Big predators. Cats and bears. I know."
Amani's mouth opened. Closed. "How do you know that?"
"Your sister talks when she's scared. She told me a lot of things during the investigation.
" Nero kept his voice light. "Including, and I'm quoting, 'My brother has the worst taste in men.
He only goes for guys who could bench-press him, which is the dumbest criteria for a partner I've ever heard. '"
The sound Amani made was not quite a laugh but it was closer than anything Nero had heard from him since the rescue. Surprised. Involuntary. A sound that escaped before the armor could catch it. "She said that?"
"She said a lot of things. Your sister talks when she's scared. You go quiet. Interesting how that works in the same family."
Amani's expression shifted. The near-laugh faded and something more guarded took its place. "You read people for a living."
"Yes."
"Stop reading me."
Nero held his gaze. "No."
The word sat between them. Simple, flat, inarguable.
It was the most honest thing Nero had said all night and they both knew it.
He wasn't going to stop reading Amani because reading people was how he kept them alive and this particular person was someone he intended to keep alive for reasons that were already beginning to exceed professional obligation.
Amani's jaw worked. He looked like he wanted to say something sharp and dismissive, something about ferrets and their place in the food chain, something that would reestablish the distance between them.
But he didn't. He just looked at Nero for a long moment, and the assessment behind the amber eyes was slower this time.
More careful. A different kind of calculation than the one he'd run with the bear's fist bump.
"The formal statement," Nero said, shifting back to professional because if he stayed in the other register much longer he was going to say something that this kid was not ready to hear.
"We'll need one eventually. Not tonight.
Not tomorrow. Whenever you're ready. It can be written if you don't want to sit with anyone. "
"Fine."
"The three sharks who grabbed you, Dale and Mako are in custody. Paulie's running but my partner's tracking him. Jack cooperated fully. He's the one who called in the tip."
Amani's face went very still at the mention of the sharks. His hands found the bar and held. "Jack called it in?"
"Yes. The night it happened. He couldn't live with it."
Something moved behind Amani's eyes, too complex and too quick for Nero to fully read, which was rare. Not forgiveness. Not gratitude. Something tangled and unfinished that Nero filed away for later because it would matter eventually, probably around the time Jack's case came up for sentencing.
"Okay," Amani said. "That's. Okay."
Nero stood. He pulled a card from his wallet, not his business card, which had the division number and the tip line. A blank card, the kind he kept for informants and witnesses who needed a direct line. He wrote his cell number on one side and his home address on the other. He set it on the bar.
"That's my personal number and my address. It doesn't matter what time it is. If you need to talk, or if you can't sleep, or if you just need to be somewhere that isn't here and isn't your apartment, you call that number or you show up at that address. Three in the morning. Four. Doesn't matter."
Amani looked at the card. He didn't pick it up. "Why?"
It was such a simple question and the answer was so complicated that Nero didn't trust himself to give it. Not yet. Not there. So he gave the simple version, the version that was true enough to hold weight.
"Because I've been doing this job long enough to know that the hardest part isn't the thing that happens to you.
The hardest part is the three AM after, when the room is quiet and your brain won't stop and you don't know who to call because it feels like nobody in the world is awake at three AM.
" He tapped the card. "I'm awake at three AM. "
Amani looked at the card for a long time. Then he picked it up and put it in the pocket of his hoodie and said, "I doubt I'll use it."
"That's fine."
"I'm really not your type either, by the way. I don't date cops."
"I'm not asking you to date me. I'm asking you to call me if you can't sleep."
Amani's hand went to the card in his pocket.
An unconscious gesture, his fingers finding the edge of it through the fabric, confirming it was there.
He probably didn't know he was doing it.
Nero saw it, didn't mention it, but filed it in the same place he filed the near-laugh, the armor drop, the way Amani had sat down when he'd been told to, not because he'd been commanded but because some part of him recognized the voice of someone who was not going to hurt him and was tired of fighting.
"Goodnight, Amani."
"Goodnight, Detective."
Nero walked out of Kinky Kritters into the Vegas night.
The air was dry, warm, and smelled like concrete, neon, and the distant chemical sweetness of the Strip.
He got in his car and sat there for a minute with his hands on the wheel.
He thought about a kid in a gray hoodie with armor over his armor and a near-laugh that had escaped before he could catch it and amber eyes that were learning, slowly and against their will, to look at a ferret and see something other than a disappointment.
He drove home. He didn't expect the phone to ring that night. Probably not the next either. But it would ring. Nero was patient. Nero was a ferret. And ferrets were very, very good at waiting.