“That’s fucked up,” Jem said.
“Would he really do that?”Tean asked.“Out someone to their family?Or shame them by exposing what they looked at on their phone?”
“He already did it,” Beckett said.“There was a guy here back when Quinn and I started, and he thought he’d figured out a way around it.Gerald sent his family everything—sent it to all his brothers and sisters, sent it to his parents, sent it to his grandparents.Videos.Pictures.Messages he sent to guys on the apps.How’s that?You want your grandma reading a message you sent to some dom top on Prowler asking him to turn your hole inside out?”
“That,” Jem said, “isseriouslyfucked up.”
“We think he killed himself,” Beckett said.
“We don’t know that,” Quinn said.
“Nobody ever heard from him again.He disappeared.”
Tean was shaking his head—tiny movements, barely there at all.His lips were pressed firmly shut.His color was bad.
“That’s what some people want,” Quinn said suddenly.
“What?”Jem asked.
“Some people do this because they want, you know, accountability.”
“It’s not accountability,” Tean said.“It’s blackmail.”
“Who would want that?”Jem said.
Quinn darted a sidelong glance at Beckett.
“No,” Beckett said.
“That’s why Tafton’s in-laws made him come,” Quinn said.
“Quinn!”
“It is—Nora’s parents are super rich.And super LDS.”
“But his wife knows he’s gay,” Jem said.“Why not divorce him?”
“Because she loves him.”
“Not enough that she didn’t go crying to her parents when she found out, though,” Beckett said.
Quinn nodded.“They’re the ones who made Tafton come.And if he screws up, they said they’d cut him off.”
“Hold on,” Jem said.“He’s here to keep his allowance?”
“There are worse reasons,” Beckett muttered.
Quinn only offered another of those soft shrugs.
Silence followed.The blush in Beckett’s cheeks was fading, and now he shivered slightly, holding himself more tightly.Quinn, still staring resolutely at the floor, flexed his toes against the tile.
With a sigh, Jem grabbed the towels from the hooks near the door.He tossed one to Quinn and the other to Beckett.
As the men wrapped themselves in the towels, Beckett said in a milder tone, “Someone really killed President Fitzpatrick?”
“Is that hard to believe?”Tean asked.
Beckett seemed to think about the question for a moment.“No, I guess not.”
