“And the fucking?” Calasked.
The bear had been in the envelope for a while, stuffed into the bag against the messenger’s sweaty back. It still felt damp where it wasn’t rough or scaled with char. Over-the-top revulsion bubbled up out of Joe’s stomach until he could taste the acid of it against the back of his throat.
It was a burned toy, he thought with irritated clarity. That was all. What waswrongwith him?
“You drive me to that,” Joe said as he pulled the bit of paper loose. Shreds of it were left stapled to the bear. “I decide when Edward needs to know about it. See? It’s a perfect system.”
There was an edge to Joe’s voice that…. It wouldn’t be fair to say he didn’t mean it, because he did. But he could still wish it weren’t there. The low snicker from Cal cut through Joe’s mood like a dash oflemon, straightforward and amused.
“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” Cal said. “Because you’re a bit of a dick.”
“I don’t remember you complaining,” Joe pointed out with a flicker of humor. It guttered and died out again as he unfolded the note.
The handwriting scratched over the paper in an unexpectedly loose script, all bulges and fat, exaggerated curves on the rounded letters.
DID YOU MISSME?
Joe twisted the paper up between his fingers and tossed it toward the bin. “It would be easier,” he said impatiently, “if they’d at least lay out why they hate me. It would help to narrow the field of suspects. And shut up, Cal.”
“What?” Cal asked as he stuck his hands in his pockets and slouched, hip-shot and lazy, against the table. It wobbled under his weight, and Joe steadied it withone hand. He opened his mouth to say something and stopped himself, the side of his tongue caught between his teeth.
“You should go,” he said instead. “Take the afternoon off. I’m not in the mood to be good company, and I’d rather youdidn’tjoin the ranks of those who want me to fuck off and die.”
Cal shrugged. “I’ve got a thick skin,” he said. “And you look like you saw your own ghost.”
“It’s frustration,” Joe lied. It wasn’t as though he could tell the truth. He didn’t know why the bear had gotten under his skin. “They seem to know everything about me, down to where I have lunch, and I know nothing about them.”
He voice cracked at the end of the sentence, and with a spike of anger, he swiped the bear off the table. It flew over the room, smacked into the wall, and bounced tothe floor, scattering bits of burned plastic over the floor. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a lie. He took a deep breath and let it out down his nose.
“I don’t seem to know much about anything,” he said. His voice sounded brittle, even to him. “Not my parents, not my past, not the stalker… nothing much at all.”
Cal shifted and rubbed the back of his neck, visibly uncomfortable. “I’m kinda out of mydepth here, Joe,” he said. “This sort of thing… you want a professional.”
It wasn’t, Joe supposed, the sort of thing Cal had signed up for. A basket case in the middle of a meltdown wasn’t exactly hot. He brushed his hands together fastidiously to get the last traces of ash and mildew off his fingers and pulled a stiff, humorless smile out of his lips.
“A therapist?” he asked.
Cal scowled.“Now you sound like my brother,” he muttered and then shook his head.
Joewantedto ask, but under the circumstances, it seemed hypocritical. Before he could work out a way around it, Cal forged on and he lost his chance. “Whatever rattles around your head and what you need to do with it, that’s your business. Not mine. I meant like a private detective or something. Whoever did your backgroundcheck on me.”
“The one who makes 75 percent of his income from my father?” Joe asked. “Besides, I didn’t think I’d need it. I thought it would be easy to find out what happened. Part of my job is to find out things that people don’t want me to, and the dead don’t get up too much.”
“Whereas the living…”
“Disappear,” Joe said. “She’s not online. Her parents died when she was a teenager, and theaunt who raised her died before I was born. I don’t know who her friends were…. I don’t know where to start digging.”
Cal reached over the table and put his hand on Joe’s shoulder.
“You’ll find her,” he said. “But I don’t want this nutjob to find you first, Joe.”
He squeezed down around Joe’s upper arm and ran his thumb across the wing of his collarbone as though he weren’t sure if they weremates or lovers right then. Joe made that call on his own as he turned his head and pressed a kiss against Cal’s bony, scarred knuckles. The press of his lips, the damp swipe of his tongue, made Cal suck in a quick breath that trembled in the back of his throat.
It felt… strange. Heady as whiskey. He’d fucked plenty of men, but simple affection was—
The front door to the suite beeped its usualinterruption, and his thought derailed as he heard two familiar voices speak over it.
“I don’t know if he’s back—”
