“When could you make it?” Chris asked, and the tenor of the phone altered as he tucked it under his ear. Papers shuffled around.
“If I don’t hit any traffic, one thirty should be fine. After that I have other viewings all afternoon.”
“That’s….” There was a short huff of breath, and Chris edited whatever he’d been going to say. “That’s fine, Mr. Bellamy. Just ask for me when you arrive, and I’ll show you around?”
“Perfect,” Jacob said. “I’ll see you soon.”
He hung up and nursed the last few mouthfuls of coffee as he scrolled through Amazon for “sorry about the whole airport thing” Christmas presents. For a small surcharge, Amazon even wrapped it for him. With a new coffeemaker heading to his sister—it would probably get there before he did—he made one last call.
A carefully measured five minutes late, Jacob hopped off the wall, tossed his empty cup in the bin, and headed past the oversized glittering Christmas tree on his way to the lobby.
“—AS YOUcan see,” Chris said as he opened the doors to the main bathroom. If he was irritated at the ad hoc walk-through, he didn’t show it, and kept a smile on his face as he pointed out the best features of the elegant rooms. “Everything is finished to the highest specifications.”
It was all white tile and claw-foot bath, the stark monochrome broken up by a splash of gold and red in the towels and shower curtain. Jacob’s brain derailed and skipped “on the job” to head straight for a brief potent fantasy of fucking Simon in that bath. Wet, scarred flesh, callused fingers, and the smell of come and lavender on Jacob’s skin. The tight, lean stretch of Simon’s body under the milky water, the spread of his thighs, and the jut of his cock out of the bubbles.
He licked his lips as he imagined the taste of soap and wet flesh, and pulled his attention back to the job.
“It’s nice,” Jacob said. “But I’d prefer to be on the first floor. Are there any apartments available there?”
He didn’t offer a justification, just waited expectantly. Chris’s smoothly pleasant facade slipped for a second, and a muscle tightened under a slightly scarred cheek. Then he pulled it back.
“We do,” he said. “But only one of the three-room family units. They’re more expensive.”
Jacob just waited. After a beat Chris gestured for Jacob to leave the room ahead of him. He kept up a running patter as they walked down the corridor to the elevator and then rode between floors in the brushed-steel box.
“This unit was actually just renovated and redecorated,” Chris said when they stopped outside 14891. He opened the doors, stepped inside, and did a quick check around the space. Jacob stepped through behind and tripped into Chris hard enough to make the other man stagger. They stumbled backward into the room, a waltz of klutzes as they stepped around each other’s feet. Chris grabbed Jacob’s arm to support his weight and dropped his phone and keys.
“Sorry,” Jacob said as he caught his balance and straightened up. “Long flight. Are you all right? I’m so sorry.”
It was hard not to accept an apology. While Chris accepted his, Jacob ducked down and grabbed the phone and keys. He hung onto them and spun his apologies seamlessly into praise for the apartment.
“Oh, this I like. Would this be the unit I would have?” He walked away from Chris and into the bedroom. “Does it come furnished?”
He kept the small talk going as he walked quickly through the rooms. Does that rate include everything? When could he move in? What happened to the last resident? Do you allow dogs? By the time a frustrated Chris managed to ask, Can I have my—, he was so relieved to have them pressed back into his hands that he didn’t count his keys.
Just in time too, as five minutes early, Chris’s phone rang.
“Don’t worry,” Jacob told him generously. “You take that. I’ll just have a look around.”
Chris gave him a tight smile, turned his back, and headed for the bathroom as he had a terse, irritated argument about a delivery of a truckload of washing powder and bleach with whomever was on the other end. Jacob left him to it and headed into the other room. He made a brief circuit of the narrow, curved kitchen and then went to stick his head into the bedroom.
“—telling you, I didn’t order—”
“Chris? I have to go to another meeting,” Jacob interrupted and glanced down at his bare wrist in a mime of timekeeping. “I can let myself out, if that would be easier.”
Chris tucked the phone against his shoulder. “Ah, that’s not necessary—”
“No, no problem,” Jacob said pleasantly. “I know the way. I will call tomorrow about the lease.”
He waved his hand carelessly and left. Sometimes the easiest way to get people to let you do something was to just not give them a chance to argue. He left the apartment, walked briskly down the hall, and stopped at the elevator to send the car down to the ground floor. Just in case anyone asked.
A quick jog took him to the mystery woman’s door, and the master key he’d filched from Chris’s keyring got him inside. He pulled a pair of balled-up latex gloves out of his pocket, pulled them on, and snapped the fingers into place as he looked around.
The layout was a mirror image of the other apartment, and the decor was a slightly more shopworn version of the same grays and greige. No personal touches. No clutter—except for a stack of paperwork on the coffee table, weighted down by a coffee cup. Jacob sat down on the shiny edge of the cushion and moved the cup. He lifted it to his nose to take a sniff as he caught a hint of something acrid on the air.
It had been a while since whoever lived there had made coffee. A lip-stained cigarette butt floated in the dregs of what had probably once been quite good bourbon.
He flicked through the stack. Red pen was slashed and scribbled over the pages and notes and corrections elbowed for space between the printed lines, but it was nothing that Jacob could parse. A few sections looked similar to the code they looked at the night before, or the code he’d seen on screen during aCSI: Cyberrerun last week.
