Chapter Two
Bryce heldthe coffee shop door open for a woman making her way in. Doing so gave him an excuse to watch Jesse walk down the block. His backside was as nice as the front. Broad shoulders, trim waist, and the hottest ass Bryce had seen in the last year.
After no more than a cursory glance down the street, Jesse crossed at the end of the block, despite the red crosswalk symbol. City boy, then, or he’d lived in one long enough to gain a brazen jaywalking attitude. He was comfortable in his own skin, too. He hadn’t shown a hint of shame or embarrassment about ogling Bryce, only about the coffee he’d gotten all over them.
Thankfully the coffee hadn’t been hot, though Bryce wasn’t sure he would have noticed. Jesse’s snow-cloud gray eyes and overall charming features were distracting. His dark blond hair would look better longer rather than cropped so short, and he wore a rather drab clothing combo. However, his expressive demeanor was refreshing.
There was a familiar quality to him that nagged at Bryce. His eyes, maybe. Or the curve of his jaw. Or his nose. Surely Bryce would have remembered meeting him, but they could have passed each other on the street or been in the same bar. He must have seen him somewhere before.
The real question was whether he would ask Jesse out. Bryce hadn’t been on a date in a few months, and hadn’t hooked up with anyone for longer than that. Yet he longed to know if Jesse was just as expressive when he kissed as when he spoke.
Alex, who had impatiently stood to the side while Bryce and Jesse talked, stepped up to him after the woman passed through the door. He rolled his eyes at Bryce andtchedloudly. “Geez, old man. I thought I was the horny one.”
Bryce was only thirty-six, nowhere close to an old man, but Alex was a whopping twenty-two. They’d known each other for eight years, most of which Alex spent hanging around the DWO while Bryce worked cases. Bryce’s actual brothers knew less about his life than Alex did, and Alex counted the people he trusted on one hand, one of whom was Bryce.
Which meant Bryce knew that Alex’s bad attitude was one part early morning and one part defense against the world. Rising to his bait was a good way to set himself up with a headache before noon and arguments for a week. In favor of peace, Bryce ignored Alex’s comment and took a deep breath to clear his mind. He stepped into the coffee shop.
Celia was settling into a table in the corner of the room. She was alone, and she waved them over. Bryce had wanted to arrive early enough to catch a glimpse of her new contact. Apparently, this was going to be a rough morning all around.
“Go join Celia,” Bryce told Alex. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Alex shoved his hands in his pockets and sullenly headed toward the table. He was dragging his feet around their new team member, as per usual. When he sat down at the table, Celia glared back at him. Despite being new to the Department of the Weird and Occult, she had told Bryce about her reservations over Alex being an agent. She thought he was too immature. And Alex picked up on her annoyance, which made him more annoyed with her.
Bryce frowned in their direction. Wishing wouldn’t make his team a perfect unit, but his job would be a lot easier if it did.
He went to the bathroom, and did his best to get the coffee out of his shirt with a few paper towels and some water. Unfortunately, ruined shirts were often a part of his life. Ectoplasm and alien slime stained easily. He bought duplicates of shirts he liked, but he was pretty sure his other blue shirt was the victim of acidic spit last month.
Maybe the coffee would come out at the dry cleaners. Probably not.
With a heavy sigh, Bryce left the bathroom. Oddly enough, the coffee shop had a stale stench even though rush hour should require near-constant brewing. The music playing through the speakers seemed to change the songs to a minor key. What should have been a crooning acoustic guitar song sounded more like background music in a horror flick. The place made Bryce’s skin itch.
Bad signs, especially between dawn and noon. Creepy crawly monsters tended to disappear in sunlight, and the first few hours afterward were brighter. Itches for no reason, hair standing on end, and existential queasiness might be nothing. Or they could be the first indications that something alien or paranormal was afoot. As strong as it was this early, Bryce didn’t like the odds that it was nothing. He placed the coffee shop on his mental “Investigate when I have time” list.
He wished he had the resources to launch an investigation now. St. Louis alone had a dozen different hot spots, and the surrounding area had more. Assigned cases had to take priority. To help the DWO find those, Celia was undercover with theSpooky True Talespodcast. Her cohost had no idea she was an agent for the shadowy government organization that combated and cleaned up the messes the podcast reported on.
Bryce needed it to stay that way. He preferred getting ahead of an exposé, no matter how small the initial audience was. One problem of the digital era was never knowing when lightning would strike and turn a post viral.
Bryce straddled a chair at the table with Celia and Alex. Celia had a file folder open in front of her, and she had sorted the contents into three piles. She waved without looking at him. “Hey, boss.”
“Meeting go well?” Bryce picked up an article about rats in New York. Hardly news. He dropped the article and picked up another paper.
Celia’s contact had dug up building schematics and gone to the effort of annotating the document. The copy they had was a duplicate, but Bryce spotted a few other sheets that could turn into proper blueprints. There were even symbols to indicate how they should be laid together. The address across the bottom was for the building across the street. Setting up a meet so close to the source of a conspiracy was either ballsy as hell or a worrying symptom of obsession.
“I think he brought me an actual case, so we can’t throw this in a box and forget about it.” Celia gestured at the piles in front of her. “But there’s a lot of information and not enough evidence of wrong doing. What happened to your shirt?”
“Accident,” Bryce replied. “What’s the case?”
“That’s the thing, even he’s not sure. He’s accusing the construction company of destabilizing the psychic makeup of the neighborhoods they build in. We should reach out to other offices and see if they can corroborate his data while we work on the local angle,” Celia said.
“Good idea, though anything on this large of a scale should have hit our attention before some random bystander put it together. Are we sure he didn’t make it up?”
Alex snorted. “Because of course we’re such masters of the internet and preventers of terrible disasters thatnothingescapes our attention. Just look at the state of the nation. We’ve really helped out there.”
Bryce shot Alex a warning glare. Attitude was one thing. Blatant disrespect during a general investigation was another.
“We’re not enslaved to alien overlords, so I think the department’s done a pretty good job,” Celia said sharply.
“You’ve been ononecase where aliens claimed they were taking us over,” Alex replied, his voice dripping with condescension. “As scary as four-inch worms are, they were never a threat.”
