Lessons Learned (Sequel to 'Hitman's Creed') – 4

 

 

By the time Joey had finished what he was saying Glenn was halfway up the stairs, being very careful not to damage the footprints. Joey followed, equally carefully.

 

“I don’t think those are Nate’s footprints,” Glenn muttered. He pointed his light to the edge of the roof above the bookshop.

 

Joey immediately saw why he’d said that. The wind had done its thing up there as well as in the cut-through, leaving a fine layer of dust and debris on the rooftops. Footsteps led from the stairs to where Glenn was pointing.

 

“If I’m reading this right, and I’m damned sure I am, someone went over there, set down what they were carrying, probably a case because the mark is rectangular, and then knelt behind the parapet. He took something out of the case, and I’m betting I know what.”

 

Joey frowned. “A gun?”

 

“Yes. Best guess he was sighting it in on something or someone. That means Nate just might have seen something.” Glenn walked across to the area in question and knelt a few feet away. “Okay, Nate looks up for some reason, maybe our perp made a noise. He steps back to try to figure out who’s up here, sees the rifle barrel and decides to investigate. If the man spotted him…”

 

“He’d want to stop him before he could raise the alarm.”

 

“At least we have one possible scenario. The problem is how the man got Nate from the cut-through to… whatever. A car probably, which wouldn’t have been able to come into the cut-through.”

 

“And who is the man after? There’s no one around here anyone would want… dead.”

 

Glenn must have had the same thought because he nodded. “It was always a possibility.”

 

“But you said… No one knows you’re here. You told me that and I believed you.”

 

Glenn gripped Joey’s arms. “Calm down. This is the real world and as such there’s always a way of getting information no matter how well hidden it is. No one should be able to find me, ‘should’ being the operative word in that statement. I’ve covered my tracks to the best of my abilities, and my abilities are primo.” He chuckled softly. “Hoffa has nothing on me.”

 

“Hoffa’s dead,” Joey muttered.

 

“Perhaps, perhaps not. No one may ever know for certain. Which is what I’m saying, I’m as well hidden as he is, if he’s still alive.”

 

“Not quite, if someone’s hunting for you here.”

 

“Which we don’t know, and right now that’s not the issue anyway. We need to find Nate.”

 

“I… yeah we do. We need to re-interview everyone at either end of the cut-through about strange cars.”

 

“Any strange vehicle,” Glenn agreed as they headed down the stairs. “Unfortunately by now they’re probably all at home.”

 

“Not a problem. I don’t think there’s anyone in town I don’t know so we’ll go rapping on doors.”

 

Glenn smiled. “Now see, that’s where you have a distinct advantage over me. If I paid any of them a visit they’d probably slam the door in my face.”

Lessons Learned (Sequel to 'Hitman's Creed) – 3

 

 

“You’re the one with real experience in this sort of thing,” Joey said a few minutes later as he and Glenn crossed the street from where they’d parked in the lot beside Harv’s garage.

 

Glenn cocked an eyebrow. “What makes me the expert? You’re the one with the police training.”

 

Joey smiled slightly. “And you’re the one who can look at things from the viewpoint of the perp.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, rub my past history in.” Glenn chuckled so Joey would know he was kidding.

 

“Past? You still do it, more or less, unless the trips you say are for your job are just excuses to step out on me.”

 

“I would never step out on you.” Glenn swatted Joey’s ass. “And you know it.”

 

“I do.” Joey glanced around, figured it was dark enough, and gave him a swift kiss.

 

“Keep your mind on business,” Glenn growled.

 

Joey sobered. “So what are we looking for?”

 

“Signs of a struggle for one thing, if the searchers haven’t messed things up. As you said to Chief Leades, unlocked door, though it’s doubtful it would be now even if it was when Nate came down here, if he did.”

 

“He has to have, and there has to be a reason he did. He’s totally into Rory, he wouldn’t have missed meeting him at the coffeehouse come hell or high water, and for sure he wouldn’t have gone off with someone, even someone he knew, without letting Rory know.”

 

“So if we’re right, and it is only a supposition, someone lured him in here.”

 

Joey nodded, scanning the pavement ahead of him. As far as he could tell there was nothing indicating Nate had been there, to say the least having been taken or something worse. Cramming his hands in the back pockets of his jeans he started to move deeper into the cut-through before realizing the only illumination came from the lights over two doors on the wall to his left. He muttered he’d been stupid not to bring a flashlight when one appeared in front of him. “At least one of us was thinking.”

 

Glenn chuckled softly. “That’s why you keep me around.” He aimed the penlight he was carrying at the base of the door nearest to them then brought it up slowly along the handle side. “It’s clear,” he said.

 

“How do you know for sure?”

 

“The stuff in the corners there.” He pointed his light to the small drifts of dust and debris where the door met the wall at the bottom. “If someone had gone in or out in the last few hours it would have been disturbed. If I don’t miss my guess it piled up there this afternoon when it was so windy.”

 

“Duh. Okay.”

 

“You’d have figured it out eventually.”

 

“I hope.” Moving forward, Joey looked at the next doorway, trying to see it the way Glenn would. “Same thing here,” he commented. Walking on a few feet he stopped at the bottom of a rickety set of wooden stairs set into the wall. They led up to the roof of a shop which faced the street behind the bookshop. “Okay, someone was on these since the windstorm.”

 

Glenn came up behind him, training his light on the stairs. “Why do you think so?”

 

“Umm, maybe because I can see footprints in the dust, smartass?”

 

Glenn chuckled. “Good call. They go up and down. Which came last?”

 

“Coming down, because they overlay the others, and whoever made them was moving cautiously. There’s just toe-prints, not the full shoe.”

 

“Very good. Still we don’t know who made them. It could have been Nate.”

 

Joey nodded. “If he saw something up there, or more like he heard something because he couldn’t have seen anything from where he was standing.” Stepping back he looked up at the buildings. “It’s straight across from the top of the stairs to the roof of the bookshop.”

Lessons Learned (Sequel to 'Hitman's Creed') – 2

 

 

Joey and Glenn arrived at the police station in the center of town, parking in the lot half a block from the front entrance. When they got inside Joey led the way to the chief’s office where the deputies who weren’t already out searching for Nate were assembled. Chief Leades nodded as Joey joined them.

 

“Here’s what we have so far,” the chief said.  “Nate was last seen a block from ‘M and J’s Coffeeshop’. He was looking in the bookshop window according to the woman who saw him. That was at approximately four-forty five p.m. His roommate said they were supposed to meet at the coffeehouse at five.”

 

“Were there any cars parked close by?” Joey asked.

 

The chief consulted his notes. “None that didn’t belong to people who live here if that’s what you’re asking. At least according to Harv, and he should know. He says he stepped out of the garage to talk to Mrs. Tennor at about that time. He didn’t see Nate but he noticed there didn’t seem to be the normal number of parked cars. He put down to it’s being close to supper time, especially since there was a fair amount of traffic.”

 

Knowing Joey’s uncle Harv, Glenn was certain what he told the chief was accurate. So he asked, “Did he say there were any which weren’t from around here?”

 

The chief glanced at Glenn with a jaundiced eye. He accepted his presence at the meeting only because of his relationship with Joey and the rest of the Fairburn family, and because he’d shown up with Joey. “Harv didn’t say but come on; he was talking to someone, not paying any real attention to the surroundings. I figure we’re lucky he noticed as much as he did.”

 

Joey frowned. “So Nate must have gone into the bookshop or down the cut-through beside it to the next street.”

 

“The bookshop’s out. Mr. Michaels says no one came in after four-thirty.”

 

'Mr. Michaels is seventy and nearsighted,' Joey thought, though he didn’t say it aloud. 'Nate would have had to tap him on the shoulder before the man would have known he was there.'

 

Just then Eck, the chief deputy and Joey’s sister Mary’s boyfriend, came in. He cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “So far no one within a five block radius of the coffeehouse has seen Nate since he was reported missing. Mr. Samson let us into Nate’s apartment. Everything’s in order there. No clothes missing according to Samson.”

 

Joey nodded. “Rory should know.”

 

“Expand the search,” chief Leades ordered. “The boy can’t have just disappeared. Someone has to have seen him, or something suspicious.”

 

“What’s along the cut-through?” Glenn asked Joey sotto voce, “Any doors leading into shops or their basements?”

 

“A couple, yes.” Joey turned back to the discussion, suggesting what Glenn had hinted at, that someone check the cut-through doors to see if any were unlocked.

 

The chief sort of smiled. “Sounds like a good job for you. We need every hand which is why I called all of you in. Unless anyone has something to add I suggest you all get moving. Eck, tell them where you want them to go, please, since you’re in charge of the search.”

Lessons Learned (Sequel to 'Hitman's Creed) – 1

 

(Previously published in 2012. No longer available.)

 

“You need a haircut.” Glenn twisted a strand of Joey’s hair around his finger and tugged lightly.

 

Joey looked up from what he was doing, rolling his eyes. “You’re thinking about my hair? I must be doing something wrong here.”

 

“Oh no, you’re doing everything just…” Glenn groaned as Joey’s mouth engulfed his cock again.

 

It had been six months since Glenn had finally succumbed and admitted to himself, and to his much younger lover, that age really did not matter in the grand scheme of things. Since then Joey had moved into his home, and his life, full time.

 

“You’re driving me…”

 

Joey sat back on his heels. “Crazy, around the bend, up a wall?”

 

“All of the above?” Glenn gripped Joey’s arms, pulling him down and into a heated kiss. Their cocks rubbed together and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold back much longer.

 

And then the phone rang. In point of fact both of theirs did.

 

“You are so kidding me,” Joey growled against Glenn’s lips. “I know I turned mine off.”

 

“You thought you did.” Glenn reached blindly for the bedside table. He’d have ignored it if the ring wasn’t the one he’d set up for emergency calls. Finding it, he answered, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice as he felt Joey slide off him so he could get to his phone.

 

“Nate’s what?”

 

Glenn heard the edge of panic in Joey’s voice even as he tried to focus on what Mary, Joey’s sister, was saying. Then he understood the panic when Mary told him that Eck, her boyfriend and, like Joey, one of the town’s deputies, had called to let her know Nate was missing. 

 

“Missing how?” Glenn asked, sitting up, all thoughts of what he and Joey had been doing forgotten as he listened to Mary.

 

“Missing?” Joey’s voice echoed in the background. “How can he be missing? I just saw him a couple of hours ago as I was getting off my shift. He said he was on his way to the coffeehouse to meet Rory. He seemed fine.”

 

The two men listened to their respective callers, Glenn snagging the pen and paper from the table on his side of the bed to take notes. When the conversations ended he turned his gaze to Joey only to see he was back on the phone again.

 

“Chief, it’s me. Mom just called to say Nate…” Joey paused, listening, then said, “Alright I’ll be there as soon as I’m dressed,” and hung up.

 

“Anything?” Glenn asked as he headed to the closet.

 

“Just that he didn’t show up at Mom’s place and Rory is frantic. Mom called Eck who of course told Mary, which is why she called you I guess.”

 

“Since your phone was busy,” Glenn agreed. He took out a pair of jeans, grabbed another pair for Joey and tossed them to him.

 

Glenn had discovered he liked Nate, once he’d gotten past the fact that Joey and Nate had been almost but not quite lovers before he’d come back into Joey’s life. The young man was nice and very down-to-earth. Not the type to just vanish on a whim. He was somewhat less enthusiastic about Nate’s choice of a new boyfriend but it wasn’t his place to say anything.

 

“You planning on going barefoot?” Glenn asked a couple of minutes later when they were dressed, or almost dressed in Joey’s case.

 

“Ugh. Yeah.” He sat down to put on his shoes then bounced to his feet again. “Now I’m ready.”

 

Hitman's Creed - 64

 

Glenn flinched but didn't drop his gaze. "I'd hoped there wasn't, but if there is then all I can say is he's a lucky man to have won your love. You deserve someone you can love who loves you in return."

A long silence ensued after Glenn's words, neither man looking away from the other. "That's the problem," Joey finally said, "I don't love him." He glanced away then. "I like him, he's a good man, we have a lot in common." He shook his head slowly. "But… as my mother put it, the passion isn't there."

"There's more to loving someone than just passion," Glenn replied even though he felt he was cutting his own throat by pointing that out.

Joey sank down onto the stairs. "I'm not a callow fool, I know that. But there still has to be more to love than just enjoying each other's company." He smiled bleakly, catching Glenn's eyes. "Doesn't there?"

"You're asking the wrong man here. I've never been in a situation where I could even ask that question. However, I'd say yes, there does have to be more, for me at least. Have the two of you… you said you didn't have a roommate but does he spend the night?"

Joey couldn't help but smile. "You can kill someone without a second thought, but you're afraid to ask in so many words if I'm sleeping with him. Well the answer is that I'm not. We've known each other for a while now but we've never gotten beyond kissing and a bit of touching."

"Thank God," Glenn muttered before he could stop himself. "Sorry, that was unnecessary."

"Maybe, but it was an honest response. If I'd said that I was sleeping with him I doubt you'd have reacted the same way, or I hope you wouldn't have."

"Believe me, if you'd said you were my first impulse would have been to find that man and…" He chuckled softly. "I wouldn't have though. If I thought you were happy with him I'd back off and… back off."

Joey cocked an eyebrow. "That's it, you'd just back off."

"It would hurt, but yeah. I want to see you have what's best for you and if he's it, I have no right to interfere."

"Well that's a damned noble statement."

"It was rather, wasn't it?" Glenn replied with a slight smile. "Doesn't mean it's not the truth though."

"So you wouldn't fight for me? I think I'm hurt."

"If I thought I stood a chance, damned straight I would, but no one can fight love."

"Well, Mr. Tanner, you're right about that. Oh, that is your real name isn't it, I hope."

"Yeah, Glenn Tanner is me, the real me."

"Good. Now as I was saying, Mr. Tanner, you're right, you can't fight love so will you please for once stop trying to?"

"Meaning?"

"Ever since the day we met you've done all in your power to push me away. Well it's time that stopped." Joey inched a bit closer to Glenn as he said that.

"What about… what's his face?"

"Nate? We've talked and he… knows about you. He said he understands and I pray that he does, as callous as that may sound. You on the other hand…" He moved another inch closer.

"Are going to be stuck with you?"

"I hope you don't really think of it that way, but yeah, you are. I'm tired of the games. You're not too old, I know what you do, and what you did, and I can deal with it. Are there any other barriers you can think of that I need to knock down?"

"Umm, no." Glenn eyed him with cautious amusement.

"Good. Then damn it will you kiss me. I've been waiting for over two years to see what it would be like."

"I'm still too old for you," Glenn muttered as he closed the distance between them.

"We'll see about that once I get you to bed," Joey replied with a broad grin. He wrapped his arms around Glenn's neck. "But I think you can keep up."

"Damned straight I can," Glenn growled. And then he kissed him.

The End

(Next up: 'Lessons Learned'. The sequel to 'Hitman's Creed'.)