My Brother's Keeper Read online

  along the inside of Micah’s lower gum, his eyes never leaving Micah’s. His fingers slid out of Micah’s mouth, along his

  lower lip and his cheek to grip Micah’s chin.

  He smiled and kissed Micah hungrily, biting at his lip

  gently. Micah held to him, hugging him close.

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  Addison pulled away from him, then began to lower

  himself back to his knees. Micah tried to keep him on his

  feet, wanting more of the sensual kiss as a slight buzz began to settle around him, but Addison slid out of his grasp. He took Micah into his mouth once more, quickening his

  movements when Micah grasped his hair again.

  He knew what he was doing to Micah, driving him

  slowly but surely to a frustrated, aggressive, violent fucking.

  The violence was part of the appeal, after all.

  DETECTIVE Sam Walker sighed loudly and lowered the

  camera he held, looking down and pursing his lips

  thoughtfully. He had snapped a few pictures when the two

  men had entered the apartment, and more when the bag of

  what appeared to be cocaine had made an appearance, but

  had stopped soon after. He wasn’t quite sure why, other than he now felt more like a voyeur than a cop.

  “Kinky,” Morgan observed wryly as he watched through

  a small pair of binoculars.

  “Gives new meaning to the phrase blow job, huh?” Sam

  muttered flatly.

  Morgan barked a laugh and shook his head. “But I don’t

  get it,” he huffed after a moment of listening to the relative silence coming over the long-range listening devices. “Isn’t blow supposed to be a numbing agent?” he asked finally.

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  “Yep,” Sam answered as he looked back up at the open

  doors of the balcony of Micah Parrish’s studio apartment. He couldn’t help but wonder the same thing Morgan was

  wondering. Where the hell was the appeal in that?

  “What’s the point of getting head when you can’t feel it?”

  Morgan asked dubiously, echoing Sam’s thoughts. “What’s

  the point of fucking when you can’t feel it?”

  “Maybe he likes it like that,” Sam answered with a

  careless shrug. He didn’t want to think too hard about it.

  Other people’s kinks made his head hurt. “The high from

  oral ingestion is pretty weak too,” he added thoughtfully,

  trying to see behind the thought processes of Addison

  Satterwight. “Won’t kill you, not likely to get you hooked, unless you do it every fucking hour. Smart kid.”

  Morgan huffed in disagreement and went back to his

  surveillance notes.

  Sam glanced over at him and then back up at the

  windows. Their long-range microphones were producing very

  few sounds. Sam found it odd that neither man had spoken

  a word to each other during the entire time they had been

  following them. They’d picked them up leaving the gates of

  the country club over an hour ago. Even now, well into the

  spectacle, they weren’t making a lot of noise.

  It could mean a lot of things, the fact that the two of

  them didn’t speak. It could mean that they knew they were

  being followed and were keeping silent so they didn’t

  implicate themselves in anything, in which case buying

  smack on the strip had been pretty goddamned stupid. It

  could also mean that they didn’t have much to talk about,

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  which would imply that they were each just there for the sex, drugs, and murder-for-shitloads-of-money plots. It could

  also mean that Addison, who was reportedly a bit of a

  jabbermouth, just had his mouth full at the moment.

  “You really like the brothers for this thing?” Sam asked

  after a moment of thoughtful silence.

  “Not the other brother,” Morgan answered almost

  immediately. “But him and his buddy up there? Oh, yeah,”

  he said emphatically with a point of his pen toward the

  windows. “I mean, would you let someone put cocaine on

  your johnson and risk forever losing feeling in it?” he

  inquired of Sam incredulously.

  Sam grinned ruefully and shook his head in answer.

  “No, that definitely takes a certain type of… trust.”

  “That guy would do anything for Satterwight,” Morgan

  continued. “Anything. Mark my words, man, they’re good for this. We just have to stay on Satterwight until he fucks up.

  And with this fucking guy, he’s into so much shit you know

  he’ll do it sooner rather than later. We’ll nail ’em for it.”

  Sam watched his partner for a long moment and then

  looked back up at the balcony. A grunt came over the set of headphones Sam had cocked onto one ear earlier. He raised

  his camera and peered through the long-range lens to see

  past the open blinds once more, just in time to see Parrish pull Satterwight up off his knees by his hair and shove him at the bed. The angle obscured anything more.

  Sam lowered the camera again and frowned

  thoughtfully. The sounds of pleasure being emitted by the

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  surveillance equipment grew more frequent and insistent as

  Sam sat with his head lowered and listened with a frown.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Morgan asked as he glanced

  at Sam.

  Sam grimaced and shrugged. “Something about this

  case,” he muttered without looking up from the Ford logo on the steering wheel. “Bugs me.”

  “You mean besides following this wingnut around and

  recording nothing but low-grade porn?” Morgan asked with

  another jab of his pen in the direction of the darkened

  windows of Micah Parrish’s apartment.

  “We have to supplement our income somehow,” Sam

  joked weakly.

  “Seriously,” Morgan grunted as he went back to writing

  notes in his log. “You think your people would buy this

  shit?” he asked as he wrote.

  “My people?” Sam asked as he looked at his partner in

  amusement. “You mean white people?”

  “No, man, you know, you don’t-ask-don’t-tell types,”

  Morgan answered as he grinned down at his pad of paper.

  Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I wouldn’t take

  my word for what passes these days,” he answered easily.

  “What, not eatin’ good in the gayborhood lately?”

  Morgan asked.

  Sam barked a laugh. He had no idea how Ray Morgan

  said some of these things with a straight face.

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  “Get back to your damn notes,” he ordered fondly.

  Morgan snickered quietly, never having looked up from

  his log. After a moment he began shaking his head as he

  wrote. “Everyone we’ve talked to says this kid is so smart,”

  he mused. “He must be hiding it well,” he mumbled.

  “That was my point,” Sam said as he looked up and

  glanced at his partner. “If he’s even marginally intelligent then he has to know we’d at least be checking up on him

  and his brother. I mean, I’m talking not wearing a helmet

  kind of IQ, here,” he said emphatically. Morgan snickered

  quietly a
s he continued writing his observations. “And we

  know he’s not stupid. But the first thing he does is go to a nightclub and buy blow right under our noses,” Sam

  continued in a mystified voice.

  “We should have followed him in,” Morgan muttered

  with a shake of his head.

  “Yeah, because you’d really blend,” Sam countered

  wryly. “I don’t give a shit about coke dealers,” he added

  thoughtfully. “Is this kid really capable of pulling this thing off like we think it went down?” he posed.

  Morgan shrugged. “Anything’s possible,” he pointed out.

  “I mean, this took patience,” Sam continued. “We know

  he’s smart enough to do it, but is he patient enough for it?

  As coked out as he is?”

  Morgan shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t peg him

  as ate up when we first saw him,” he observed. “Maybe it’s

  just an ice cream habit.”

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  Sam nodded grudgingly. Morgan was right; Satterwight

  hadn’t struck him as a constant user, either. If anything he was using light. There was still life behind his eyes.

  “And in our scenario, the final dose was brought on

  because the perp ran out of patience,” Morgan pointed out to poke one more hole in Sam’s questioning.

  Sam shook his head and looked back up at the window.

  “I don’t know. I just feel like I’m missing something,” he

  muttered.

  “Yeah, your bed,” Morgan grunted.

  Sam laughed softly.

  They sat in the car sweating together in silence for a few

  minutes. They had the windows cracked, and they were both

  in their street clothes, thin polo shirts and khakis that were meant for golf courses and wicking moisture, but it was still stifling in the unmarked Ford. And it smelled like some sort of food Sam couldn’t quite identify. Mayonnaise and

  something else. Vinegar. Cole slaw, maybe? There was really no telling. Sam was certain he didn’t really want to know.

  Morgan finally glanced over at him and cleared his

  throat. “You know we’re going to have to talk to Parrish,

  right?” he said.

  “Yeah, so?” Sam answered. They were both studiously

  ignoring the sounds coming from the microphone now.

  “We might have to lean on him,” Morgan continued.

  Sam made a gesture with his hand for his partner to get

  to the point.

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  “Are you gonna be able to do that?” Morgan asked in

  exasperation.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Sam asked in confusion.

  “Well, because you’re both….” Morgan made an

  ineffectual gesture with his hand toward the window across

  the street.

  “What, Ray?” Sam prodded in exasperation.

  “Are you gonna be able to slam this guy for being queer

  if it comes to that?” Morgan asked finally, sounding both

  uncomfortable and relieved as he asked it. “It might be our only angle.”

  Sam rolled his eyes and leaned back into his seat. “I’m

  an equal-opportunity asshole, all right?” he finally said with a sigh.

  He sat and stared out the windshield of the unmarked

  car, not really looking at anything. From here they couldn’t see what was happening in Parrish’s apartment without a

  periscope, anyway. They could hear it, though.

  At least they knew why Satterwight was fucking around

  with Parrish, anyway. They were still going strong.

  Sam shook off that thought and frowned harder. It

  wouldn’t be easy, getting to them. They were going to close ranks. Morgan was right; their only way to get to Parris

  might just be that he was gay.

  And that didn’t sit well with Sam.

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  He could feel Morgan’s eyes on him. He glanced

  sideways and then rolled his eyes. “What?” he demanded

  irritably.

  “You need a hug?” Morgan asked, barely able to keep

  the shake of laughter out of his voice.

  Sam didn’t even look at him as he reached out and

  smacked him on the side of the head.

  THE soft knock on the office door provided Brayden with a

  welcome distraction from his attempts at straightening the

  mess the police search had made of his office. He had

  watched Addison walk off to go God knew where with Micah

  and then found himself with nothing to do but worry and

  clean. It had been midnight when he finally gave in and

  made the call he’d been trying to convince himself he didn’t want to make.

  “Come,” he called curtly as he stood up from where he

  had been kneeling and gathering several stacks of papers.

  The door opened soundlessly and Daniel Grace poked

  his head through the door. “You know, midnight summonses

  aren’t really in my job description,” he greeted wryly.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Brayden offered softly as he

  motioned for Daniel to come in and close the door. He didn’t feel all too badly about calling Daniel at home and asking to meet him. He knew Daniel had been awake. The man never

  seemed to sleep, Brayden had found. “I need to know what

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  you told those detectives the other day,” he said to Daniel without preamble.

  Daniel pursed his lips and looked at Brayden blankly for

  so long that it began to make Brayden nervous. Not much

  could make Brayden nervous, and certainly not many people could manage the feat. It was one of the reasons he admired Daniel so much. And one of the reasons he often wanted to

  smack him.

  “I told them the truth,” Daniel finally answered with a

  shrug.

  Brayden narrowed his eyes in annoyance, but he took a

  deep breath to calm himself. The last thing he wanted was to go off half-cocked and start shouting at Daniel now. “What

  exactly is the truth?” he asked in exasperation. “I need to know what they were asking, Daniel. What are they looking into?”

  “They were asking about the antifreeze,” Daniel told him

  with another careless shrug.

  Brayden found himself struggling to suppress the

  unfamiliar urge to throttle the man.

  Daniel, with his uncanny ability to read people, seemed

  to sense his inner struggle against the violence and he

  smiled slightly, as if he were enjoying frustrating his boss.

  The smile dropped suddenly and he was once again serious.

  “They were also asking about your brother,” he told Brayden with a hint of unease.

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  “My brother?” Brayden asked with a frown. He had

  expected that, in a way. Just not quite so soon. “What about him?” he asked with a hard look at Daniel.

  Daniel gave another shrug, causing Brayden to growl at

  him threateningly. Daniel looked at him for a long moment

  and then cocked his head to the side.

  “They were asking about his… extracurricular

  activities,” he finally answered carefully. “And about his

  relationship with your father.”

  Brayden licked his lips slowly, frowning at Daniel

  thoughtfully. “His relationship,” he repeated.

  “You know,” Daniel respon
ded in a low voice. “Did they

  get along, what did your dad think of Addison’s sexual

  inclinations, had I seen Addison around the storage shed.

  That sort of thing,” he rattled off wryly.

  Brayden’s jaw tightened. “What did you tell them?” he

  finally asked.

  Daniel pursed his lips and shrugged yet again. He

  continued to meet Brayden’s eyes unerringly when he

  answered with, “The truth.”

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  IV

  THE relentless pounding that woke him was not, as Micah at

  first suspected, solely in his head. He rolled gracelessly out of bed, distractedly wondering where in the hell Addison had gone as he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and trudged to the door. The pounding continued, and Micah winced at the

  noise as he got closer.

  “All right, all right!” he called as he undid the dead bolt with stiff fingers. “Hold on,” he muttered as he pulled the latch and unlocked the last lock.

  He opened the door and peered out, only to be met with

  two Miami-Dade police detective badges being shown to him.

  “Mr. Parrish, we’d like a moment of your time,” one of

  the detectives said to him softly.

  Micah blinked at them and looked around the little

  apartment with a frown. Where had Addison gone? He had

  indulged far more than Micah the night before; he should

  have still been sprawled in bed and drooling. He was

  nowhere to be found, though, and Micah’s apartment wasn’t

  big enough for him to be hiding unless he was hanging off

  the balcony by his fingernails.

  “Yeah, okay,” Micah muttered after a moment. He

  pushed the door closed and undid the chain, and then he

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  opened the door wider and gestured grudgingly for the two

  men to come in.

  “I’m Detective Morgan; this is Detective Walker,” the

  black detective offered as they entered the apartment. They both looked around the apartment critically as Micah closed the door again. “It’s not a bad time, is it?” Morgan asked

  pointedly as he looked over Micah’s barely dressed body and then nodded at the rumpled clothing on the floor and the