Hazard and Somerset Off Duty Read online

  The knock startled both of them, and Somers yanked his hand back as though burned.

  “My tickets?”

  Hazard couldn’t move. He could still feel the echo of Somers’s touch.

  The knock came again. Harder.

  “Ree.”

  “Yeah. Two tickets to Black Hats White Guns.”

  Somers inspected them, tucked them into the tight jeans he was wearing, and brushed past Hazard to the door. “You’re welcome,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I’m welcome? I’m the one who spent his whole day—”

  Somers opened the door, and there stood Nico: his shaggy hair in a semblance of order, his perfect, dark eyes contrite, his mouth in a tentative smile.

  “Have fun,” Somers said, slipping past Nico and disappearing down the hall.

  Hazard watched him go, and then he saw Nico’s eyes, and the look in them, and the way Nico was trying, really trying, to say he was sorry with his eyes and his smile and his shoulders and his hands. And only then did Hazard think about saying thank you, and it was too late.

  WHEN THE ROAD RISES UP

  This story takes place before Reasonable Doubt.

  I

  MARCH 16

  FRIDAY

  7:03 PM

  THE BED-AND-BREAKFAST known as Grant’s Retreat wasn’t a bad place on first impression: an old building with dark wood that looked original and, in acknowledgment of the upcoming holiday, paper shamrocks strung over the riverstone hearth. It was a big enough structure, in Hazard’s opinion, that it had started life as something institutional. A medical clinic at the turn of the century, perhaps. If so, the original shine was off. The proprietor looked like something out of Hollywood: a West Coast best effort at recreating the quintessential Midwestern bumpkin. Buck-toothed, balding but with a fringe of stringy hair brushing his collar, the man couldn’t have been past thirty, but everything from his speckled scalp to his oversized work boots made him look older.

  That would have been bad enough, Hazard thought. But it hadn’t stopped there. He had his mouth pursed, and he had color in his cheeks, and his eyes, huge and watery, zipped between Hazard and Somers like beads on an abacus. This Midwestern bumpkin was doing the math: two men, one room, one bed. Even for an idiot like him, it wasn’t hard.

  “Norwood Grant,” was all he said, though, tapping the placard on the desk and then passing Somers the key. “We keep a decent establishment, gentlemen. Is that clear?”

  “Excuse me?” Hazard said.

  “I want you to understand: we welcome all types. But this is a place for families. I hope you can take my meaning.”

  “Got it,” Somers said drily. “I won’t pull his hair, and he won’t scream like a banshee. Come on, Ree.”

  Grant’s little pursed mouth tightened into an ugly pucker. “If you need anything, just say the word.”

  Somers grabbed his suitcase and took a step towards the hall, but Hazard studied this movie stereotype in front of him and tried to decide if punching the hotel clerk would be the beginning or the end of a great vacation. “Your last name is Grant?”

  “That’s what my mother said.”

  “Why did you name this place ‘Grant’s Retreat’?”

  “Well, mister, that’s a good question. I bet you’ve never heard of the Battle of Belmont. Don’t feel bad; most folk your age haven’t.”

  “The Battle of Belmont was fought on November 7, 1861. Brigadier General Ulysses Grant brought Union troops across the Mississippi from Cairo, Illinois to attack a Confederate camp at Belmont, Missouri. Grant’s attack was initially successful; when the Confederate troops reorganized, though, they drove Grant back across the river.”

  Norwood Grant’s fingers were long and the nails were yellow, and they spidered across the reception counter. “Look at you. We’ve got a regular history buff. Six hundred seven Union soldiers died. And six hundred forty-two Confederate folk. I bet I could show you some historical sites on the map that you and your—” He paused. His greasy pate shone as his head darted in Somers’s direction. “Your friend, I could show you some places you might like to see.”

  “Why did you name it Grant’s Retreat?”

  “Well, you just said it. The general had a retreat. And it’s a joke, you know. A retreat like a place you can get away from the world.”

  “A pun.”

  “That’s what it’s called: a pun.”

  “Ree, are you coming?”

  Norwood Grant’s watery eyes didn’t change at Somers’s words, and his voice didn’t change. All he said was, “Your friend is waiting.” But it was that word, friend, like what he really meant was faggot. It was all in the way he said it.

  “You’re too far from Belmont.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ree? What’s wrong?”

  Hazard waved a hand at Somers. “You’re too far from Belmont for that name to make any sense.”

  “Your friend—”

  “Don’t fucking worry about my boyfriend.”

  Grant’s chin came up like Hazard had just clipped him, and his watery eyes widened.

  “And you’ve got your numbers wrong,” Hazard said. “Six hundred and forty-one soldiers died in the Battle of Belmont.”

  He was halfway to Somers and the hallway when Grant recovered enough to call after them. “The last one was a local boy. And he’s the damn ghost!”

  II

  MARCH 16

  FRIDAY

  8:38 PM

  NO ONE GOES out of town for St. Patrick’s Day.”

  “We’re not going out of town for St. Patrick’s Day. It just happens to be St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. And it’s our first time traveling as a couple; I wanted to have a trip together.”

  Emery Hazard watched his partner suspiciously. John-Henry Somerset, blond and trim and beautiful, ignored him and instead twitched aside the bed-and-breakfast’s curtain. Full dark hammered at the glass.

  “I saw shamrocks.”

  Somers sighed, let the curtain fall, and turned to face Hazard. “It’s just a sweatshirt.”

  “I was talking about downstairs—wait. You have a sweatshirt with shamrocks?”

  “And underwear, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  Hazard grunted, trying to hide his interest. Instead, he said, “And of course you picked a bed-and-breakfast with a homophobic staff.”

  “Sorry. Nobody mentioned that in the reviews.”

  “And no internet, Somers. They don’t have internet and it’s the twenty-first century.”

  Somers crossed the room, navigating around the massive bed and the heavy, antique furniture. “It’ll be good for us to disconnect for a couple of days.”

  “No cable. Not even broadcast TV.”

  By that point, Somers had reached Hazard, and Hazard could smell the day’s sweat on him, and his hair, and the sea salt-and-amber musk of his cologne. Somers’s hands reached up and wrapped around Hazard’s arms.

  “My phone doesn’t even work out here. Nothing. Not a damn bar.”

  Leaning in, Somers kissed him, and it was one hell of a kiss.

  Hazard had trouble remembering what he’d been saying, but he made an effort and valiantly said, “We have no goddamn idea what’s going on in the world—”

  Somers forced a knee between his legs, spreading them, and one of his hands left Hazard’s arm. Hazard let out a groan, and his head dropped back, and Somers kissed his neck. The invisible blond stubble rasped across Hazard’s skin.

  “I guess,” Somers said in a throaty voice, “we’ll just have to find a way to keep busy.”

  “And they have a ghost,” Hazard said. “You heard him.”

  Somers cocked his head thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

  “Oh Lord.”

  “Because now when I pull your hair and you scream like a banshee, everyone will think it was the ghost.”

  III

  MA
RCH 16

  FRIDAY

  11:58 PM

  THE BABY’S CRYING woke Hazard. It was a long, shrieking cry. A terrified noise. It entered at the edge of consciousness, needling Hazard’s brain through the thick cotton of sleep until he was fully awake. His heart pounded, and he struggled to make sense of the noise in those first disorienting moments:

  A ghost.

  And then, slightly more rationally: Evie? Was that Somers’s daughter crying somewhere?

  For another minute Hazard lay there, the child’s wailing echoing in his ears. Somers had an arm across his chest, and although the room was chilly, sweat slicked Hazard’s skin. His heart continued to pound, and his brain began to churn as he stared into the blackness of the room. Deep, pitchy night. Not the usual ambient glow of the streetlights that polluted their city apartment. Then memory kicked in, and he remembered: they were on vacation.

  The baby was still screaming.

  Hazard slid free of Somers’s embrace, kicked the blankets loose, and immediately crashed into something tall and heavy—a floor lamp that weighed as much as the Empire State Building. Hazard swore, hopping on one foot and cradling his throbbing toe, and flicked on the lamp.

  “Ree?” Somers said sleepily.

  “It’s that damn baby.”

  Somers mumbled a response and flopped onto his back. Hazard paused for a moment to enjoy the view—at thirty-five, Somers still had the chiseled body of a professional swimmer, with sculpted muscles and a delicate dusting of golden hair over the black calligraphy of his tattoos. At fourteen, Hazard remembered, Somers’s shoulders had started to broaden, and at sixteen he had abs. Those abs, glimpsed fleetingly when the boys changed for PE, had given Hazard about five years of wet dreams. But at thirty-five, Somers was even more beautiful than he had been as a boy. And in the oblique light from the floor lamp, Somers had the beginnings of crow’s feet around his eyes. Hazard smirked. The lines were hot; just about everything on Somers was hot. But he was still going to enjoy telling the blond man he had wrinkles.

  Limping on his aching foot, Hazard negotiated a path through the cramped room: an iron-banded chest at the foot of the bed, a wingback chair with cracking leather, a luggage rack with Somers’s suitcase—the sleeve of that damn shamrock sweatshirt was poking out of the bag—and a tarnished mirror.

  “Ree?”

  “Go back to bed.”

  It was the crying that made Hazard open the door. It wasn’t the noise itself; he had worked enough night shifts as a cop, he had lived in a dorm, he had shared a bed for most of his adult life. He knew how to fall back asleep when a noise woke him.

  It was the quality of the crying, the timbre, the shrill intensity. The panic, his brain provided. Hazard felt a shiver of recognition. Yes, that was exactly it. The panic in that tiny voice. The terror. And the portion of his brain that was fully awake, the eight percent that was struggling to assemble a logical explanation for the worms in his gut, that part was saying that infants were easily startled, and they were in unfamiliar surroundings, and the tone that Hazard took for panic could just as easily have been anger or frustration or an infant’s helpless efforts to communicate a need. That eight percent of his brain, fumbling for answers the way Hazard had fumbled his way into that damn floor lamp, told him to get back to bed and go back to sleep. Or, better, see if Somers had ever put his underwear back on.

  But the part of Hazard’s brain below the waterline, the portion of him beneath rational thought, the subconscious or whatever you wanted to call it, that part was strong at the moment. In the day, Hazard did his best to suppress that voice, to focus on the cold, calculating reason that always gave the best answers. Now, though, still half-asleep, he found it hard to ignore that pre-rational voice. And that part of his brain was telling him that there was a child in this building that was terrified.

  And at night, as he stood in the long hallway paneled in dark wood, with the old electronic sconces dim and flickering and the leadlights framing the moon like prison bars, Hazard had to admit he was terrified too. Not rationally. Not the part of his brain above water. But deep down, he felt that terror, and he blamed it on Somers.

  For several long heartbeats, Hazard stood in the hall, and the draft licking his legs was cold enough to raise goosebumps on his arms. The crying continued, but Hazard couldn’t figure out which direction it was coming from. He took a few steps in one direction, and then he took a few steps in the other. His heart had started to beat faster.

  “Ree, what are you doing?”

  Somers hung from the doorframe, naked. In that pose, with his weight suspended from his arms, all the lines of his body were pulled taut. The tattoos across his arms and torso curled, the dark script seeming to rewrite itself. He was also half-hard, and that buzzed through Hazard like a runaway lawnmower.

  “Get back in the room.”

  “Why?” A smirk as hot and lazy as July crept over Somers’s face. “Afraid someone will see me?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  Still hanging from the doorframe, Somers jiggled a little, miming a burlesque, and Hazard groaned and covered his eyes.

  “People usually like to look at me, Ree.”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  “Yep. That’s pretty much the idea.”

  Hazard pulled down his hand in time to see Somers leave the doorway. The blond man wrapped both arms around Hazard’s neck and pulled him down for a kiss. He was past the halfway point, now, and Hazard felt himself growing hard, pressing back against Somers until he broke the kiss.

  “Quiet,” Hazard said, planting a finger on Somers’s lips. He listened. The crying had stopped.

  “Did you hear someone?” Somers shivered and slid a hand into Hazard’s boxer-briefs. Hazard whimpered at his touch. “This is kind of hot, right?”

  “Get back inside,” Hazard growled, and it was a weak, kittenish growl, but it was the best he could come up with. Marching Somers backward, he said, “I don’t want to get arrested for public indecency because I have a nudist boyfriend.”

  Inside the room, Somers yanked on Hazard’s underwear and grabbed him, hard, and Hazard let out another whimper.

  “Fine,” Somers said, mock-serious, but his eyes were glittering turquoise. “What about private indecency?”

  IV

  MARCH 17

  SATURDAY

  9:30 AM

  IT USED TO be a school,” Somers said, propping open a pamphlet as he cut his pancakes with the side of the fork.

  Hazard folded a piece of bacon, folded it again, and took a bite. “What?”

  “This place.” Somers waved the pamphlet. “Grant’s Retreat. It’s a bed-and-breakfast now, but it used to be a school.”

  Craning his neck, Hazard scanned the buffet. Still plenty of scrambled eggs. Good. But the sausage links were scarce, and the bacon—

  “Where are you going?”

  Eyes on the chafing dish, Hazard barreled towards the buffet. He reached it at the same time as a pinkified older woman: pink jacket, pink shoes, pink nails, and a cascade of tight curls with pink tips. Confronted with all that pink, Hazard didn’t realize at first how old she was: past sixty, doubtless, and probably closer to seventy. More importantly, though, she had the bacon tongs and was stirring the few, scanty pieces as though trying to decide which to take.

  “They never get it crisp enough.” Rattling the tongs against the chafing dish, she called, “Richard, it’s not very crisp.”

  Richard was a dandelion puff of a man in a down jacket, balanced delicately on top of a pink all-terrain scooter with better tires than Hazard’s car. A single good sneeze probably would have knocked the old man into the next county. He bobbed his head in response to the woman’s words, and Hazard had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

  “Is this your first time at Grant House?”

  “Grant’s Retreat?”

  “Yes, yes. That’s what they call it now.
Is it your first time?”

  Hazard kept his eyes on the tongs as they stirred the bacon. “Yes.”

  “Here with your wife?”

  “What?”

  “Where’s your wife?”

  “Do you mind if I—”

  Without seeming to realize it, she slid the tongs out of reach. “My name is Barbara. Barbara Keminsky. And that’s Richard. We come all the time. Over at that table,” a bedazzled pink nail indicated a sallow, middle-aged couple, “are George and Lorraine Willis. They’re here all the time too. Do you know how to play bridge?”

  “I’d like to get some of the bacon if I could—”

  “Lorraine’s going to ask if you know how to play, and if you do, you should lie. They’re terrible. At bridge, but at the rest of it too.”

  Hazard threw a glance over his shoulder. Somers had laid down the pamphlet and was watching him, grinning openly. When he met Hazard’s eyes, his grin grew exaggerated, and he gave a ridiculously enthusiastic thumbs-up.

  “You don’t have a wife, do you?”

  “What?”

  Barbara’s voice dropped, but not much. “That pretty young man.” Then she made a little O with her mouth and slapped his wrist. “And a grizzled old thing like you with him. You’re robbing the cradle. Of course, everyone said that about Richard. Richard, dear. Richard. Didn’t everyone say that about us?”

  The dandelion puff bobbed his head, his whole body jouncing inside his down coat.

  “He’s not that young,” Hazard said, rubbing his wrist. “Now if I could just—”

  “It’s such a relief, having the gays spread out and come down here. You know, your people have done wonderful things. Really wonderful. With houses, you know. And clothes. In fact, I have some pictures of our house. I’m thinking of redoing the closets, and I wanted—oh just a moment. Richard. Richard! Get my phone. No, Richard, my phone! I want you to take a look—”