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  * * * *

  Chan and Sanchez looked up when he came in, and Chan jerked his chin toward Colton's office. He nodded, and the two detectives followed him in. Sanchez closed the door. “El Patron was in, looking for you. Twice."

  "He say what he wanted?” Sanchez shook his head. “Okay, what have you got?"

  "We got those pawn shop break-ins. Tilly and Bryan are down interviewing the owner."

  "How'd we get stuck with those?"

  "Nothing was reported stolen, but the gun racks are all empty. Just some ugly spray paint. Graffiti..."

  "Pencil dick,” Chan supplied. “In red enamel. But then they smashed the glass cabinets. And somebody helped themselves to some guns. Maybe the artist, maybe not."

  "There seems to be an ugly divorce,” Sanchez said. “There's a pissed-off wife, a pissed-off girlfriend, a girlfriend's husband. But then I hear this little rumor there's new guns on the street. I got feelers out."

  "Yeah, okay. What else?"

  Sanchez hesitated, and Chan looked over at him. “This kid came in, looked like a baby queen from down over the border. Wanted to file a complaint of kidnapping and sexual assault. Against Dr. Diego Del Rio. When he came in he asked for you, Colton."

  Colton stared at Chan, his mouth dropping open. “No fucking way."

  Chan nodded, handed over a copy of the statement.

  "What was your take?"

  "It was bullshit,” Chan said without hesitation. “I thought it was bullshit."

  Sanchez stroked his mustache slowly. “It was like it was scripted, you know? A bad actor reading a role. But there was something else. He looked around, then he relaxed, like there was somebody he didn't want to see. But he'd asked for you, so it must have been somebody else.” He shrugged. “I don't know. The whole thing was off.” He passed a picture to Colton. “I got Edwards to snap a picture of him with the cell phone. You know him, boss? He said his name was Jesus Martinez, but we could call him Marti."

  "Marti?” Colton looked at the picture. The boy was slender, effeminate, Mexican or part Mexican with a narrow face and black hair, and a very red, shiny mouth. Colton frowned down at him and shook his head. “I don't know him. Did he really come into a cop shop wearing drag queen lipstick?"

  Chan grinned. “Yeah, and lots of cheap drugstore perfume. Not your type, Colton.” Colton eyed him. “But the handsome Dr. Del Rio sure is."

  Colton raised his eyebrows, sat back in his chair and waited. His unit, his men, he thought they probably knew he was gay, but it wasn't something that had ever come up publicly, at work. Sanchez was stroking his mustache again. “After we took the complaint, we went up to the hospital to see Dr. Diego, but the pretty nurse said he was having lunch with his partner, Lieutenant Wheeler. Near as I can guess, the baby queen was sent to set you up, boss, not your good-looking surgeon. Or maybe to out you to your unit. But we already know you're a pansy-ass, so that didn't work. Or maybe he just wanted to cause a little trouble. But I think some cabron sent him."

  Colton leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, thought about all this. Chan stared off into space, and Sanchez leaned against the wall. Sanchez had silvered hair and a silvering mustache against dark brown skin, and Chan had a pockmarked Asian face with a Cajun accent. They had a bunch of informants, like the Baker Street Irregulars, working girls, young men on both sides of the border, kids who lived in the hard, dangerous places. They were Colton's favorite detectives, his most trusted cops. They lived in the gray areas, like him.

  Colton sat up. “Let's see if we can get a line on Marti. See what the street says about him. Then I guess we better wait and see what happens next."

  "What about the complaint? You want us to take a statement?"

  Colton ran a finger down the statement and shook his head. “I'll ask him if he knows the kid.” He looked at the office calendar, noted the dates. “For now I can give Dr. Del Rio an alibi for the weekend in question."

  Chan and Sanchez looked at each other, then back at him. “He went with you to El Paso to snatch the baby back?” His voice was mild.

  "You can trust me."

  "Yeah, okay, boss."

  When they left the office, Colton picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff's line. His admin picked up. “Lieutenant Wheeler? He's out of the office, but he asked me to pass on to you if you called that you were invited to dinner tonight at his house, seven-thirty. Your aunt is expecting you."

  "Okay, thanks, April. Tell him I can't make it. I've already got plans I can't change. I'll call my aunt and tell her."

  Aunt Margaret had a sweet, breathless voice, and she still hugged him when she saw him like she had when he was sixteen, like she didn't get enough hugs and she didn't know when the next one might come. He and Diego had taken her out to lunch for her birthday a couple of weeks before, and Diego had been at his most charming, so handsome and attentive that Aunt Margaret had become even more flustered than usual.

  Colton had never talked to Aunt Margaret about being gay, and he never would, because Aunt Margaret was fragile, her world divided into increments of four hours, the times between her doses of medication. Diego understood after having lunch with her, how impossible it all was, and he hadn't said a word about meeting the rest of the family since then.

  "Dinner, Colton dear? Were you coming to dinner?"

  "I thought so. Do I have the day wrong?"

  "I don't know. I get so mixed up, I'm sure it's me. Did I ask you to dinner?"

  "No. The sheriff said something. I probably have it wrong, Aunt Margaret. How are you feeling?"

  "Oh, about the same, dear. My medicine, it seems to be mixed up, I don't know. I wish I could go see that handsome doctor for these headaches. Is he that kind of doctor, Colton?"

  "No, he's a surgeon. I'm not sure what kind of doctor you go to for headaches. I'll ask him if you want."

  "Oh, thank you, Colton. I'm so stupid sometimes! I can't believe I forgot about dinner."

  "No, it was me."

  After work Colton drove toward Diego's loft, downtown near the hospital, let the creeping disquiet he'd felt the last few hours crawl up and out of his belly. The complaint felt bogus, but who else besides the cops knew he'd been gone that weekend? Was somebody trying to set up Diego, or him? And why?

  And what had Diego done while he'd been gone? Had he ever met Marti? Colton seemed to remember that Diego had been on duty at the hospital that weekend, but they didn't keep each other on a tight rein. If he had moved in, like Diego had been pushing him to do, he'd know, wouldn't he?

  Diego had been a wild child, his body some sort of thrill ride open to the world. Until he met Colton. The first time Colton had ever seen him, he was half-tanked, dancing in a club downtown, his shirt off and his jeans low around his hips, that black hair flying across his face. He'd been dirty dancing with some poor kid who had a boner so big Colton had his doubts that sucker would ever go down.

  Colton had been drinking, too, just a bit to take off the edge, gold tequila, and he'd gone out on the dance floor, pushed between all the bodies, men smelling like sweat and semen. He'd taken Diego by the wrist, pulled him away from the kid he was dancing with.

  "Sorry. He's with me.” And the kid took one look at his tough face and big shoulders and backed down.

  Colton pulled him over to his abandoned bar stool, still miraculously empty, sat down and pulled Diego into his arms. He looked smart, that's what Colton thought, staring down into Diego's black eyes, smart and wild and half-crazy, his eyes reckless with drink. Colton sipped from the glass of tequila he'd left on the bar, then gave the glass to Diego. He took a tiny sip, just enough to wet his tongue, then they leaned toward each other, mouths already open, tongues burning. Diego shivered, moved closer into his arms. The sweat was drying on his skin, and Colton pulled him close, wrapped his legs and arms around him to keep him warm and they made out like a couple of horny teenagers without saying a word.

  Eventually Colton stood up and threw some mone
y on the bar. “You need to find the rest of your clothes?” He reached for him again, ran his tongue up Diego's salty neck.

  "You're just gonna take them off, right?"

  "Yeah. I'm going to take them off. Every fucking thing. And I may never let you get dressed again.” And for the first time, looking down into a man's face, Colton thought, this is for me. He's the one.

  A blast sounded behind him, and Colton looked up to see the light had changed. He put his truck in gear. No, Diego was wild, but he was also a third-year surgical resident. The residency programs worked them like slaves, especially the senior guys. He was more likely to stagger home and drop like a log across the bed with exhaustion after a thirty-six hour shift than to stagger home smelling like tequila and spunk. Colton wasn't worried. He knew who Diego was. He was the one, just like he had thought that first night. And every night since had just convinced him more strongly.

  Something was going on, some ugly trouble bubbling up, but it was his kind of trouble. This felt like his world, not Diego's.

  He stopped by the deli, picked up a couple of bagels and a piece of salmon for breakfast, and a half-pint of those Greek olives Diego liked. Diego was home early, his ridiculous blue Mini Cooper sitting like a toy in the big boys’ parking lot. Colton pulled his truck into the parking space next to the Mini Cooper and then climbed the stairs to the loft.

  The door wasn't locked again. He pushed it open. “Baby, why don't you ever..."

  The loft was covered in blood splatter, and a man was tied to a brick column in the living room, bloody handcuffs, battered face, blood matting his black hair. It wasn't Diego. He was younger, skinnier. Marti? Colton, gun in hand, reached for Marti's neck and checked for a pulse. Nothing. His throat had been cut, his chest drenched with blood.

  "Diego? Where...” He was shouting, his voice hoarse.

  There was a scream from the bedroom. “Colton, no! Get..."

  Then something slammed hard into the back of his head, a brick, a rock, and he fell forward. Black on the edges of his vision, stars, and he tried to crawl toward Diego's voice, Diego was screaming, screaming, and he was crawling through blood, blood on his hands and on his knees, then someone hit him again, and the floor came up and kissed his cheek.

  Chapter Three

  He woke up in the hospital, the hollow throb in his head so strong he couldn't bear to open his eyes. He wanted to vomit but he couldn't move, he was tied down, he couldn't move his head. He heard something, a hoarse scream, Diego's name. It must have been him.

  They told him his neck was broken. He was in a Stryker frame, his head and neck immobilized until they could fuse the bones. He could move his eyes, that was about it.

  Chan and Sanchez came by to give him a thirty-second report. Sanchez leaned over the bed. “Your uncle assigned Gilbert and Robbins.” Colton closed his eyes. Those two were dirty and lazy, a deadly combination in cops. “No one can find him, boss. There was some blood in the bedroom, didn't belong to the kid. Just a little, though. Like he was hurt, not dead. We'll keep looking. El Patron told us to back off, leave it alone. Let his people investigate."

  "Did he? Find him, Sanchez. He's hurt. I heard them ... hurting him."

  "Yeah, okay, boss."

  "Look for his car, that Mini Cooper."

  "It's still at the loft. Maybe they have him, Colton. If he left on his own, he didn't take the car."

  The nurse came into the room then, gave him a shot that knocked him out. He was in the OR a couple of hours later. The surgeon fused the broken bones in his neck together.

  Three weeks later he walked out of the hospital, more or less in one piece.

  Aunt Margaret had been to the hospital a couple of times to see him, crying and praying, and the last time, the night of his surgery, she'd become hysterical, the whole thing was her fault, her tears making a mess through her makeup, and Colton couldn't calm her down. Aunt Margaret had never been good in hospitals. He asked her not to come again, but to wait, and he'd come see her when he got out of the hospital.

  His uncle had come to see him once, in his uniform, had stared down at Colton with cold eyes. “Thought you were gonna go have dinner with your Aunt Margaret. Too bad. Seems like you walked into quite a mess, some freak murdering another freak, and your fingerprints all over the place. Your shaving gear in the bathroom. Your clothes in the bedroom. I get this mess cleaned up, Colton, you better not shit in the nest again."

  Chan came very late one night, told him they'd been given a pile of BS cases and the sheriff was watching them real close. There was a warrant out for Diego's arrest, murder, attempted murder, assault and battery, kidnapping, sodomy.

  "Attempted murder?"

  "You, Colton. They said he attempted to murder you. They got a nice little pile of evidence and a nice little report, A connects to B, C connects to D. It fucking stinks. They think we're stupid?"

  Colton's mouth was so dry, it was driving him crazy. The drugs were making his mouth dry, his skin itch. “Why? What's behind it? What's the endpoint they're looking for?"

  Chan shrugged. “Maybe this is the endpoint. He's gone. We don't know where. Best case, he's on the run, or in hiding. You're down and out. Maybe you can't think of anything else, not with him gone. That's our current endpoint."

  "Maybe you're right. But that is a serious fucking miscalculation on somebody's part, isn't it?"

  * * * *

  Colton tore down the crime scene tape and used his key to open Diego's door. The old blood smell wasn't as bad as he'd been thinking it would be. Tucson was dry, and the air conditioning was turned low. He and Diego both liked the heat. The blood had dried on the hardwood floors, across the walls. The brick column where Marti had been handcuffed was one of the original building features that Diego had loved in the loft, sandblasted brick walls and arched brick columns, faded, soft rose. The old brick was porous, and had soaked up the blood. They'd never get it out now.

  In the bedroom Colton studied the mess. The far wall had a couple of smears like a handprint, and a couple of smears about where his face or head would be, if he was held or thrown up against the wall. There were some smears on the golden wood floor next to the wall as well. Then the duvet on the end of the bed—had they thrown him up against the wall? How did the blood get on the bed? Was it his, or had he managed to hurt somebody?

  There was a soft tap at the door, and Chan and Sanchez stepped inside. “We had a boy watching the door. Maybe they do, too, boss."

  "Good. Let's make somebody nervous."

  "You sure you want to do that? You're not back up to your fighting weight yet, Colton.” Chan walked over to the wall, studied the blood smears. “Seems like somebody's already nervous."

  "I won't let him come back until it's safe."

  "We don't even know if he's alive."

  Colton turned to Sanchez, ignored what Chan had said. “I've got to make sure it's safe before he comes back. You two, see if you can find the lockbox. He had a fireproof box with his important papers—his will, the student visa, and I think his green card just came through. We need to know if that stuff is gone. If it is, maybe he took it with him."

  "'Cause he's a doctor? That's why he got a green card?” Sanchez knelt down and looked under the bed, then moved to the closet.

  "Yeah. He's in that category, special occupations or whatever they call it."

  Colton left them in the bedroom, went through to the answering machine attached to the phone. Blood smears on the table. Whose? They didn't look like they'd been sampled by Crime Scene. “Hey, Chan. Come look at this.” They studied the blood, four smears the size of fingerprints, nearly invisible on the dark wood. Somebody had held the table, but there was no blood on the phone. Or it had been wiped up.

  A message had come in a couple of hours earlier. He pushed the play button, and a woman's voice he didn't recognize spoke to him. “He's alive, and safe. He says don't look for him.” Then a dial tone.

  Colton felt his throat closing, the salty burn o
f tears in the back of his mouth. Then he was breathing again, grinning and looking like a fool, and Chan was pushing him down into a chair.

  "Colton, you're just out of the hospital with a broken neck. Aren't you supposed to be on bed rest or something? You're gonna have to go a little slower."

  "No time,” Colton said, wiping hard across his face with the heels of his hands. “I got no time to go slow."

  He spent the evening scrubbing blood off Diego's floors with bleach and water. He shoved the duvet into a plastic trash bag, hauled it down to the dumpster, along with all the spoiled food from the refrigerator. He wanted to have the place clean and good-smelling when Diego came back. Diego loved the loft, and Colton wasn't gonna let that get spoiled. And he was moving in, better late than never, do it while Diego was in hiding, and safe.

  What he was going to do was flush out that sick fucker, turn over some rocks and see what was hiding. Because what he had figured out, lying in a hospital bed for three weeks, with nothing to do but think, was that this was a hate crime. This was a hate crime directed against the two of them, because they were in love, and happy, and hate crimes were against the law. And he was the fucking law.

  He slept late the next morning, kept Diego's pillow pressed against his face. Chan was right. He needed to go easy. He almost couldn't move his head, and his shoulder muscles were in spasm. The surgeon who had fused his neck bones had told him he shouldn't drive, shouldn't work, shouldn't use a computer. He could sleep, walk, eat. Right.