“Are you really, totally, absolutely sure there’s something to these cases?” Luke was grasping at straws now, and they all knew it.
“We are sure there is something going on in Spartanburg. What exactly it is, we intend to find out.”
“I thought you had given up on being diplomatic?” Luke groused.
“I hate to disappoint you again, Luke. This is not me being diplomatic. This is me being absolutely honest. We can’t even say if the deaths are connected. To find out, we need to be able to move freely without DeCapristo or Savalle hounding us.”
“I hear you. I don’t like it, but I hear you.” Luke sighed so deeply that Andi almost felt sorry for him. “Just a warning. If Agent DeCapristo gets so much as a whiff that Judge Dunhill’s death was indeed murder, she’s going to try to wrestle it all from you. And she won’t be taking prisoners.”
“We know. As I said, all Andi can tell for sure is that the circumstances of the judge’s death are suspicious. It’s absolutely clear that he and his buddy died from hornets. Why though, we intend to find out.”
“I thought you found the nest?” Luke sounded hopeful again.
“We did.” George sighed. “And Andi made the connection, and that’s how we can be sure that these hornets are the killers.”
“Let me guess, there wasn’t an impression of the killer to be found? Is that even the right word? Impression?”
“Impression works as good as any other word. And no, I couldn’t sense anybody close to the nest when they killed Judge Dunhill. There was something though.” Andi was a little pissed he couldn’t pinpoint what that something was. It was like an itch on the inside of his skull, making him wish he could split it open to reach inside.
“Fine. I’m going to talk to the higher-ups. Give me an hour.” Luke ended the call without waiting for their goodbyes.
“He’s not happy.” Andi wasn’t sure what to think of Luke’s state of mind.
“No. Sucks to be him.” George winked. “Let’s go pack. We, too, can use the time productively till he calls back.”
“Uh, yeah. Packing shit. Time well spent.” Andi rolled his eyes. George must have thought he was joking because he laughed. Nothing could be further from the truth. There were several banes in Andi’s life, the geschenk and other people existing on the planet being on top of that long list, though George wasn’t too bad. He could stay. In the top ten were also packing stuff because it meant going someplace he didn’t want to be, shopping for furniture, which was always more comfortable in the shop than when you unpacked it at home, and kale. As there was no escaping it, he followed George upstairs into their bedroom. On the way there, Andi glanced out of habit at the door behind which his gran’s bedroom still was. Her presence was almost completely faded now, but he had no intention of letting go. It would feel too much like giving up, and Andi never did that.
George was already putting accurately folded laundry on his side of the immaculate bed—another thing that had changed after his man had moved in. Andi rarely bothered making his bed in the morning, arguing that it would just get crumpled again during the night. George not only made their bed in the morning, but he also bought a bedspread for it as well as some pillows for decoration. Every evening, the bedspread and the pillows were put aside on a chair George had placed next to the wall for that reason alone, and every morning the bed was artfully prepared for another big day full of bed mites and silverfish and all the other creepy crawlers hanging out around the house. They didn’t care about the looks of the bed, just like they didn’t care about anything that had no direct impact on their tiny lives. George was happy though when he made the bed, all bursting yellows and oranges mixed with blue because the act of it was a form of stress relief for his partner. Andi found the act itself tedious and superfluous, but since George didn’t expect him to contribute, he could ignore it beautifully.
Shaking himself out of these useless thought processes, Andi went to his side of the wardrobe and started grabbing T-shirts, underwear, and trousers. He placed them in a haphazard heap on the bed next to George’s neat piles as if to emphasize how different they were. At moments like this, Andi couldn’t help but wonder when George would realize what he had gotten himself into and leave Andi and all the baggage he was carrying. So far, the stubborn man claimed he knew what he was doing and that Andi should stop worrying. As if that could happen. At heart, Andi was pragmatic, though that didn’t mean he was immune to thinking ahead and fretting about possible outcomes of different actions. And if the geschenk wouldn’t suck most of his energy up, he might have tried to accommodate George more in an attempt at keeping him.
It was funny, really, how certain people would say that changing for your partner should never be necessary and who would rather enhance their behavior than be considerate of the other person in their life, just out of principle. Andi didn’t think giving oneself up to please another person was a good thing, but if he could, he would change a few things about himself if it meant George would stay with him.
It was another complicated thought he didn’t like dwelling on too long because he wasn’t overly fond of some of the implications it brought.
Without missing a beat, George went from tending to his own clothes to folding Andi’s, turning the heap of cloth into something ready to enter the travel bag waiting at the foot of the bed.
“Thank you.” It wasn’t needed but Andi felt it had to be said.
“You’re welcome. I know how much you hate packing, and I enjoy getting everything neat. Plus, that way I can check if you have everything.” George winked, stepped around the bed with one of Andi’s older T-shirts in hand and gave him a quick kiss before returning to his task. He was almost done when his cell rang again. George put the last trousers into the travel bag before he accepted the call. He put it on speaker.
“Hello, Luke. How did it go?”
“Hello, George, and Andi, I assume?”
“Hi, Luke.”
“It went but not in a way you’re going to like.”
George and Andi shared a look. “Can you elaborate?” When George started talking in this tone, he was bracing himself for bad news.
“I talked to my boss who was amiable to the idea of you taking over completely. She then called DeCapristo’s boss who wasn’t agreeable at all. He started accusing the office of trying to hinder FBI investigations and stated he wouldn’t stand for it anymore. I’m paraphrasing here as this is what my boss told me. For various reasons, I’m not privy to why she refrained from taking this up to the next level of command, and now you’re stuck with Agent DeCapristo. The good news is she’s stuck with you as well. She can’t overrule you, and her boss is going to tell her the same as I’m telling you. Play nice.”
“Play nice? That’s all you’ve got for us?” The electric fields around George were fizzling like crazy, making it more than clear what he thought about the whole thing.
“Unfortunately, yes. You’re new to the office, untried, so to speak, so you don’t have as much clout yet as some of our other agents. Give it a few successfully solved cases and you’ll get a lot more leverage and leeway.”
“This is not what you promised us when you offered to bring us in on the case. Why am I not surprised?” Andi had no problem showing his anger. Luke still had to earn his way back into their good graces. At the moment, it wasn’t looking good for him.
