15. Saint
The next two days are peaceful, with oral sex and take-out and several very nice shared showers. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that we could just stay here until the threat was eliminated, but I don’t make a practice of looking gift horses in the mouth. As such, I had my head down enjoying all of this while I had it. I was good at that, soaking up the good where I could find it and saving it for when it inevitably ended.
Rishi”s reports of security happenings at the shelter were reassuring. I wasn”t sure if Greene or Fernandez would be willing to sacrifice the other kids to pull theirs out but I wasn”t about to put it past them considering what they were doing to me. I doubted the lives of a bunch of gay kids would mean Jack-shit to Greene. Fernandez I was less willing to speculate on. I didn”t think he actually thought I was running a brothel with underage kids, I was mostly sure he was just using that to put the target on my back, but it showed how far he was willing to go.
Well. That and the motherfucking spider. Not to mention the drive-by.
You know, just some little things that add up to a whole picture.
I checked in with Casimir now and again. He was healing without complications, with visits from several of his fellow officers and a nice card from the kids at the shelter. Many of them knew Cas and respected him. He always tried to do right by them.
Rio and I were flirting with the idea of penetrative sex, but we hadn’t taken that step yet. It was almost becoming a game, a way to work one another up when we were doing other things. Late one night, while he choked me on his prick, Rio growled at me that he would pin my hands behind my back and take me from behind and I had nearly come right there on the floor. After he was done he asked me if that was too much, too far, and I shook my head. “No…” I answered, and quietly confessed what it had nearly triggered.
His eyes had gone wide and he had kissed me in a way that had sent heat all the way down to my toes. “You’re such a good boy, Sexy, aren’t you?” he asked.
I shivered hard, looking at his handsome face. He looked turned on and pleased, mouth open in a smile even as he was panting slightly. My lips turned up into a smile of their own with no prompting from my brain and I nodded slowly. For Rio, I wanted to be.
Midmorning one day my phone lit up with a call from Clay Greene. I scrambled to answer it, adrenaline shooting through me over what he could be calling me for. “Clay?”
“Hi, Saint. How are you?” He sounded unsure.
“I’m okay… What’s up? Are you okay? Is everything okay at the shelter?”
“Well… Uh. It might be nothing, I’m probably oversensitive, you know? But– there’s a new guy.”
I frowned. I hadn’t heard of any new guy aside from Rishi. I covered the mouthpiece and hissed at Rio, who was doctoring a cup of coffee at the coffee pot in the room. His head came up and he came to me immediately. “A new guy? Since when?” Rio pulled his phone out and began to scroll. He hit a button and put it to his ear.
“Yesterday afternoon. The temporary director introduced them as a new volunteer counselor. They seemed cool enough then, but today they’ve been talking to everybody. Asking questions. He tried to talk to me but I wouldn’t say anything other than, like, hums and stuff. I remembered how you shouldn’t say anything without a lawyer. I mean I know that’s usually the police but I figured it couldn’t hurt. I don’t– I just have a bad feeling. Like with everything going on and you’re not here and–”
“You’re absolutely right, Clay. You did well and I am proud of you. I’m grateful that you called and let me know about this too.
Rio was speaking quietly into his phone, his mouth a thin, hard line. A lick of fear ran through me. I could absolutely take care of myself, and I had Rio at my back. The kids, though, I wasn’t there to protect them. Who was this new person?
“Fu– He’s coming this way. Gotta go.” The line went dead.
I lowered my phone and looked at Rio, who frowned back at me. “Hold on,” he told whomever he was speaking with. He lowered it too and tapped the speakerphone button. “You’re on speaker. I have Michael Durand, director of the shelter, here too.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Mr. Durand,” the smooth voice on the other end of the line said. “I’m pleased to be able to speak to you. I am Rishi Rao. Rio called regarding the newest volunteer. I did not meet him yesterday or I would have included him in my security report. My shift yesterday was from midnight the night before to ten AM, and I am told they arrived around two pm. I was not informed of their existence until late last night. I have sent everything that I know about them to Lee, but as you know I was only able to do that this morning and they haven”t yet gotten back to me.”
“I understand,” I said. “Has the interim director said anything to you about him?”
“No. They speak to me very little, in fact… I think because I take many night shifts they either forget me or they think that I am not important to speak to.”
I cursed inwardly. The interim director was a board member, the only one who had served as long as I had. He was passionate about helping the LGBTQA+ community but whereas I had learned that the world was not kind very early on because I was a member of it, he had had far more of a silver spoon upbringing. He was kind and helpful but he didn’t understand some of the more serious issues surrounding the community. He was also rather unfortunately trusting. Not as dim and gullible as Ginny, but he also often missed the approaching cheetahs because he saw them as cute kitty cats instead.
“I will call them,” I said. “I apologize that they have been making you feel that way.”
“It isn”t your fault, Sir. I will see if I can speak to the new volunteer today, if you would like?”
“No, not yet,” I said after a quick moment of contemplation. “If they’re a plant, we don’t want to tip them off too quickly. Let’s let Lee see what he can find, and I’ll talk to the interim director.”
“Understood, Sir. Very good. Is there anything else you would like me to do?” Rishi asked.
“No, but thank you. Everything was quiet last night? The daily security reports have been extremely welcome,” I said. I was very grateful that Shiloah had hired Rishi for the shelter. I didn’t care about my own security in particular – though I was now very happy to have Rio – but for the kids I was all in.
“It is my pleasure. You have a wonderful organization here and it should be protected and preserved.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that,” I replied. He sounded sincere and that was heartening.
Rio hung up and looked at me. “Well.”
I frowned. “I know. I’ll call the director now. That’s one hundred percent a plant, isn’t it?”
“Most likely,” Rio agreed.
I also wasn’t best pleased that the director wasn’t acknowledging Rishi. I hoped it wasn’t racial. The director was white but I hadn’t seen him discriminating on the basis of race… Of course that didn’t mean he didn’t do it. I hoped it might just be a case of out of sight, out of mind, or maybe since there was nothing concerning in the overnight reports he thought there was no reason to engage with Rishi.
I planned to disabuse him of that notion.
I placed the call to the interim director, Mr. Kenneth Roger Williams, who picked up on the second ring. I had received several emails from him regarding general happenings and such, but I had not spoken to him since our last board meeting several weeks before Casimir had brought Clay to the shelter. He seemed surprised to hear from me now, his tone holding a note of shock. “Saint, how are you? What can I do for you?”
“Kenneth. I just heard about the new volunteer counselor. I was hoping to get a copy of his credentials. As you know, the situation with some of the kids is pretty tenuous and new people scare them,” I said.
“Oh! Didn’t you know he was coming? He said he had been approved months ago but he had delayed his start date due to traveling out of state for a family death. His name is Roland Cunningham. He’s been a high school counselor for fifteen years and now he’s semi-retired and wants to give back. He says that he saw so many gay kids who needed an ear.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost hurt myself and Rio frowned at me questioningly. I shook my head and pulled in one deep breath before I spoke. “No, he hasn’t been approved for months. I’ve never heard of him. I suspect he’s a spy who belongs to Clay Greene.”
I could hear Kenneth suck air, then chuckle disbelievingly. “Oh, no, Saint. That’s impossible. He had a copy of a volunteer application that you signed and dated in January. You probably just forgot, I know you’ve had a lot on your mind with your sister and everything.” I heard him click his tongue and had to work to not reach through the phone and wring his neck. “He’s going to make sure the kids have someone else to talk to. Don’t worry about it, I’m taking care of everything.”
Rio’s frown had morphed into mild alarm, and I wasn’t sure what my face was doing that was causing it but whatever it was must have been interesting. He edged closer as I took several deep breaths. “Kenneth. Listen to me. You need to be cautious. Have you seen the security reports from Mr. Rao? Did make sure you let him know about this Cunningham? Did you run the background check?”
“I glanced through the reports, yes, but no, I didn’t tell him about Roland. Mr. Rao is the night guard and Roland is scheduled for afternoons.” He chuckled lightly. “I didn’t see the overlap.”
I did not grind my teeth, but it was a near thing. Rio hovered, not touching me, which I was grateful for. Once I got off this phone I was going to go off. “What about the background check, Ken? You know the background check policy.”
“Oh, yes,” Kenneth said. “We did the background check. Completely clean, exemplary record with several awards from his career. Really, you need to calm down. I have it all under control.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it then, Ken. Thank you.” I hung up before Kenneth could reply and Rio looked at me warily. “I am going to have him kicked off the board so fast his fucking head is going to spin. Shouldn’t be too hard, it’s full of ball bearings and broken gravel,” I snarled.
“So that didn’t go well,” Rio observed quietly. He was still hovering, clearly unsure of how best to handle me.
“Might say that, yeah,” I said. “Everything I said went in one side of his toupé and out the other.” I flexed my hands, my phone still in one of them, and finally Rio stepped into my space and took both of my hands in his. I held myself rigid for a moment, then sagged. “Morons. Motherfucking morons. He has volunteer paperwork I supposedly signed and dated in January. It’s a forgery of some sort, obviously, but I’m not there. I can’t prove it.” I shook Rio off to pace to the other side of the room and back. “Dammit, we need to go back. We have to get this asshole out of there and away from the kids!”
Rio scrubbed his hand over his face. “Saint–”
“No, I know, I know. ‘Saint, we can’t, it’s too dangerous.’ What is he doing, though? Who is he? Is he simply on a fact-finding mission or is he planting something that will hurt the kids? Or is he there to brainwash them? Plant the idea that being gay is wrong? Rio…” I slowed to a stop, running out of words. I looked at him, feeling the most helpless that I have in my life. “I’m supposed to be protecting them.”
“I know…” Rio put his arms around me and I held onto him tightly. “Lee is looking. If there is anything, anything, that looks like he is an immediate threat, we’ll go back. Okay?”
I didn’t like that plan, but it was the best that I could hope for, so I nodded against his shoulder. “Yes…”
When Rio pulled back I mourned the loss of his arms around me and he kissed me. “Everyone else is working on this, Saint. There’s nothing we can do right now. I can take care of you, though… Would you let me settle you?”
I shivered at the tone of voice he used, the way his deep brown eyes bore into mine, and the way his hands slid down my arms from my biceps to my wrists. I swallowed and nodded.