A thick tentacle curled around his throat and draped over his shoulders. He couldn’tfeelit, but the memory of the dry, fidgeting heft of it still made him shift his weight back automatically.
“Yeah, I get it,” he said as he popped the sucker out of his mouth. “One way or another, I picked you, not the other way around.”
The tentacle tightened, long straps of muscle moving visibly under the pale skin. It could have been meant affectionately, or not, but either way it didn’t have much effect. Davy left it to it as he twiddled the chewed white stick of the sucker between his fingers and stared at the computer screen.
Thirty years, give or take. That was how long ago Fraser had started his dayandended it with a reminder of fratricide. It seemed like the sort of thing that implied something about the person who did it.
Davy didn’t know what exactly—guilt, pride?—but it had to have a psychological impact. He stuck the candy back in his mouth and tucked it into his cheek. The sickly-sweet taste seeped slowly into his teeth as he pulled the keyboard toward him.
The box on the screen, brusque and free of a user-friendly interface, demanded a password.
Davy hovered his fingers over the keys as he ran through his options.
ikilledmybrotherdidn’t work, which was a surprise.
Neither didhedeservedit.
The computer told him that if he got the password wrong one more time, it would lock him out.
“That is the point,” Davy said absently.
He flexed his fingers. The knuckles didn’t pop. He grimaced to himself. Between this and the fight that never was in the lift, he was getting blue-balled left, right, and center today.
DavyJonesLives.
He hit enter and smirked as the computer shut down. With luck, whoever got tapped to fix his system would actually do the legwork to log the failed run of passwords. That would be awkward for Fraser, which would be a shame.
Now, for what he had come here for.
Davy braced his propped foot against the edge of the desk and pushed. He rolled jerkily back toward the floor-length windows, the wheels of the chair bogged down in the plush gray carpet. His tongue curled around the tacky paper of the candy stick as he dropped his feet to the floor and looked around the room.
If he were a go-bag, where would he be?
Under the floorboards was industry standard, but—
Davy pushed himself up out of the chair and walked over to the bookcase that took up one wall. There were only a few books in it, all industry titles and uncracked spines. Like Fraser hadn’tbeen the weird neighborhood kid with no friends, three library cards, and an addiction to pulp sci-fi and Westerns.
As opposed to… Davy picked up a workmanlike silver frame from a polished black shelf and looked at… a heavy-set middle-aged man with high cholesterol, a classy wife, and a hot stepson.
Now that was creepy in a different way, but Fraser wasn’t that sort of asshole. He’d never had anything but contempt for the perverts who’d come sniffing around when they were kids.
Davy studied the posed, postcard-perfect family portrait for a second longer. It was fairly recent from Hill’s haircut—he had the vibe of someone who didn’t think about that often—and age. Fraser looked content, or at least pleased with himself, and like someone who’d consider the comfort level of his having to crawl around on the floor.
So, make it eye level.
Davy set the photo back down and stepped back to take in the rest of the room. His gaze hooked on the bookshelf, and he cocked his head to the side. Maybe, but it wouldn’t be Davy’s first choice—if you were in the shit that deep you wanted to get in and out—and, like it or not, he and Fraser had the same instincts.
He moved it down the list of possibilities as he turned on his heel to check out the rest of the room. It didn’t take long. Fraser likedhavingexpensive things, but it gave him no pleasure having themaround.Unless there was a need to posture, he preferred things to be “clean.”
It was why they’d worked so well together. Davy made problems go away, and Fraser cleaned up the mess.
Funny that he’d swapped those roles with Hill’s dad after he killed Davy.
Davy snorted to himself at that and rubbed the back of his neck. Probably something pretty fucking psychological there too, but not real useful right now. He walked over to theonly other prominent decor in the room, a clutch of letters of commendation and Fraser’s commission framed and hung prominently on the wall over the narrow couch.
Without him thinking about it, his tentacles squirmed over his shoulder and groped through the glass and paper and plaster into the wall behind. It felt—
Davy screwed his face up as his brain tried to map sensation onto a body that didn’t have the actualbits.It wasn’t unpleasant, just very weird to feel dust and dry wood on his earlobe and in his ass crack. The gossamer stickers of spiderwebsinhis nose made his stomach turn, and it took a lot to do that.
