Bad Idea (Stonewall Investigations Miami Book 1) Page 22

  “June seventh, Grove, Last Sunday, Time Sent.” Fox read the most recent message out loud, none of those words meaning much to me, and judging by the befuddled looks on Ayana and Fox, it didn’t make much sense to them either.

  “Dragon, right?” Dank had replied.

  “Yes” was the sole response, no more communication after that.

  “And look, check it out, there’s a signature code to the texts.” Ayana tapped something else on the screen and the image that had been attached to the text expanded. It was a photo of a piece of paper with the letters L.M.F. written across the center in strong black marker. “It’s probably a way to authenticate the message as real. If you notice, it’s like a signature, changing with every image, on every text.” Ayana cocked her head, a “hmm” escaping her lips.

  “Who could that be?” Fox asked, more to himself than to us.

  “L.M.F.” I repeated the letters out loud, trying to making any kind of link in my head. The first link was outrageous but came out of my mouth anyway. “Little Miss Funshine?”

  Ayana and Fox looked at me with a blank stare before bursting out in laughter.

  “Just brainstorming,” I said, laughing along.

  “Hey, it could be, dude,” Ayana said. “You never know these days. There’s a hacker group called Teddy Bear Army, so who knows what drug dealers are calling themselves.”

  Fox wasn’t laughing anymore. He was staring at me, his eyes narrowing. “You’re a genius, Jonah.”

  Ayana and I both went: “Huh?”

  “I was thinking those three letters could be someone’s initials, but maybe they aren’t. They could stand for something else, like a movie or a book.”

  “A place?” I asked, my brain stretching for connections.

  “It could be,” Fox said excitedly.

  “Still doesn’t help crack the drop code,” Ayana was quick to point out.

  I looked to the screen, racked my brain. “If we figure out the drop and pickup location, we can set up surveillance and get the source of Dragon on camera. This is like hunting El Chapo before he was ever El Chapo. We have a chance to stop something big from happening. We just need to crack that code.”

  “Do you boys have any leads yet?” Her amber golden eyes jumped between the two of us.

  “Things are starting to point in a surprising direction,” Fox admitted. “We’ve found some evidence that’s beginning to make it seem like this entire thing is headed by someone from the inside. One of the guys at the top of Club Trinity.”

  She raised her eyebrows, her lips parting and her head nodding slowly. “Shit.”

  “Yeah, that’s been my reaction,” Fox said, a dry chuckle escaping his lips.

  We dug through the rest of Dank’s phone (whose real name was actually Norman Reese, which… sure). There was nothing else besides random dick pics and bookmarked articles on how to grow weed in your closet. He had numbers saved of other drug dealers and suppliers, but trying to trace any of them led us to burner phones.

  By the end of an hour, we could see we had all we could get. It was useful, for sure, but we were still confused as fuck.

  “Thank you, Ayana. I really appreciate all the help.” Fox took her into a tight hug as we said our goodbyes. When they finished, she turned to me, a warm smile on her face.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Jonah.” She rejected the hand I held out for her and took me into a hug. In my ear, she whispered, “He’s a great guy.”

  And then we separated, the words echoing through me.

  We got into the elevator and rode it down to the lobby, talking excitedly about what we’d found and what we still needed to find. Tossing around different solutions to the puzzle we were just handed. We knew the letters in the signature definitely didn’t stand for Little Miss Funshine, but we were close to something else. And what were all those dates in that message? A grove was involved, but what the hell did that mean? There were a shit ton of groves in Miami. The fact that our investigation was honing in on the top of Club Trinity’s pyramid gave us a little bit of help, but answers still evaded us. We weren’t at the end of this thing yet, but we were getting damn near close, and that idea was exhilarating.

  Something that wasn’t as exhilarating, though? Reality. The reality that, as we exited Ayana’s building, I still didn’t have my own place to live in. Fox was more than kind to offer me his place, and Chibby seemed to have adjusted in record speed to his change in surroundings, but I knew it would never be a permanent place for me. It couldn’t.

  “You look stressed,” Fox noted as we walked down the street to our cars. The sun was gone, replaced by a sliver of a bright moon.

  “I’m…” Damn. Was it that obvious? “Yeah, I’m stressing myself out right now. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  “What are you stressing out over? The case? We’re going to figure it out. L.M.F. Keep saying it over and over again in your head.”

  “The case, and… well, my living situation… I feel bad going to your place right now. I should be heading to a hotel. I should be going to a motel, save money while I try to find a place I could live in that isn’t already lived in by a colony of roaches. I’m kind of really stressed, yeah.” I could feel myself working things up in my head, past the point of reasonable return. My palms were getting sweaty, and words were becoming more difficult to piece together into something resembling a coherent sentence.

  Fox must have seen it, too. We stopped next to my car, Fox standing in front of me, his gaze pinning me to the ground.

  “You’re going to be okay, you hear me, Jonah? You’re not going to any grimy motel, or any hotel for that matter. You’re staying at my place, and that’s the end of that. You aren’t stepping on my toes, and you aren’t a bother. I actually want you there, if I’m going to be honest, which is something you’ve been making me do a lot of recently.”

  I looked up into his eyes. His message hit me loud and clear. I was going to be all right, and more so because I had Fox with me. He was on my side, fighting in my corner.

  I kissed him. I don’t know what exactly pushed me to do it, but I did. There on the empty side street, his face illuminated by the orange street lights above us, I kissed him. It was short and sweet and powerful.

  It confirmed things for me.

  It was all going to be okay.

  24 Gabriel “Fox” Morrison

  Three Weeks Later

  Time shot by in a blur. Before I knew it, almost a month had passed since I had met Jonah.

  Since my life altered course for the better.

  Before him, I was drifting, bobbing up and down in empty open water. The elation of my new job had only lasted a short time before the emptiness from the rest of my life crept in and took over. And I had accepted it. Welcomed it, almost. The emptiness felt like comfort, keeping me safe and secluded and centered. It was almost a military-like instinct, to take hold of that emotion and make it yours, to not let the opposite happen.

  So I claimed that emptiness, owned it.

  And then Jonah shook my hand and everything changed.

  We’d gotten closer and closer ever since. It was a double-edged sword, this relationship we were developing. I was being stupid, I knew that. Jonah was still very much in flux, and what was happening between us only added to his confusion. I got that, and that frustrated me to no end.

  I didn’t want there to be confusion. I didn’t want there to be turmoil. I just wanted Jonah, and I wanted the happiness I knew would come by the two of us being together.

  Being together. That’s not going to happen.

  I had to keep myself in check. I stood in my kitchen, the sunlight breaking through the sheer white curtain that covered the window. The coffee machine sputtered and whirred, spewing coffee into my cracked blue mug.

  I had to remind myself that Jonah was here temporarily, and that our friendship was just that: a very strong friendship.

  A friendship that had us giving regular blowjobs to each other, showering together
, always eating dinners together, sitting and watching TV together for hours on the weekend.

  Who the fuck am I kidding. This is as much a friendship as Bert and Ernie had.

  And everyone knows they were fucking.

  We worked exceptionally well together, too, in a professional setting. We had different strengths and weaknesses that made working together complementary rather than messy. It was specially important since we were working so closely together. All the other detectives at Stonewall already had their own cases and were working pretty independently, but Jonah and I were very much linked. Dragon thankfully hadn’t spread, yet, but it had taken six more lives and caused the DEA to take heavy action against Club Trinity. We had gotten the call last week that the club was shut down indefinitely, news that none of us wanted to hear, but we all knew it was necessary.

  This meant Dylan, Pierre, and Lucien had extended their honeymoon trip and had been out of the country since. It was frustrating, seeing as how the evidence we’d uncovered was leading us right back to the club, but we could do nothing about it except wait for them to come back so that we could interview them. Pierre still hadn’t sent over the security camera footage, and that was something else I was highly interested in checking out, although we did talk to the tech company he used and verified that they were in fact real and busy.

  In the meantime, Jonah and I worked hard trying to find any other links or clues. We still couldn’t figure out what the signature L.M.F. stood for, nor could we figure out when or where the next drug pickup was going to be, but at least there was something biting on our line.

  Our hours were long and our days were sometimes brutal, so it helped that we had such a strong bond from the jump. I hadn’t even felt this close with my squadron until two months into my deployment, but then again, I hadn’t been jerking off my squadmates after our long days either.

  I grabbed the mug, the coffee steaming. I added two packets of sugar and a drop of the hazelnut creamer, exactly how Jonah liked it, and stirred. I walked over to the guest bedroom and knocked on the door.

  A grunt told me it was all right to come in.

  Inside, Jonah was sitting up in bed, his hair messy and his blue eyes glossy with residual sleep. Around the room was a neat mess of cardboard boxes holding all of Jonah’s life together. Chibby’s tank was going to go in the cleaned-up guest room, but I ended up liking Jonah’s scaly green companion more than I thought I would and asked if he could leave the tank in the living room. I figured Chibby would get more entertainment that way, too, instead of being stuck inside a bedroom all day.

  “Got some coffee for you,” I said, walking over and leaving the cup on the nightstand. Jonah was shirtless, the light-blue covers stopping at his waist. It was difficult trying to keep my eyes off his chest, which I had covered with come only the night before.

  Pretty much every night since Jonah came over, we had hooked up in some way or another. And every single time the experience was electrifying. I loved it. Every second of being with Jonah.

  So, needless to say, when we would separate every night, going to our respective rooms, my heart would be tugged, painfully. It didn’t feel right. I hated going to bed by myself, knowing Jonah was only a few feet away, a couple of closed doors separating us.

  I also knew that the second I invited him to sleep in my bed with me, things would change forever. It reminded me of that first night we hooked up, when Jonah had given me an explosive blowjob and had come in his own pants, that same night we had fallen asleep together and for days after I was still smiling from how happy that had made me. That night had happened by accident, but if I asked him into my bed...

  “Thank you,” Jonah said, groggy but smiling. We’d had a late night after getting home at three from casing out a potential drug drop. Didn’t turn out to be fruitful, but we didn’t let that ruin the night for us. We stayed up until four, rubbing and writhing and sucking, until we both came and crashed.

  I figured Jonah was going to need this coffee.

  “What time is it?” he asked, looking around the room. I realized I hadn’t bought a clock yet. I had gone on a spree a couple of weeks ago, buying a good amount of new furniture and getting around to finally setting up the guest room as an actual guest room instead of a storage place. Jonah and I had spent an evening listening to good music, drinking good wine, and building furniture with terribly fucking complicated directions.

  It was a blast, and it meant Jonah had an actual place to stay while he looked for an apartment, instead of crashing on my bed or the couch.

  As much as I wanted him to sleep in my bed with me…

  “Eleven thirty,” I said.

  “Whoa, shit, it’s late.” He grabbed the mug, took a grateful whiff with his eyes shut, and drank.

  “Figured I’d let you sleep in.”

  “Since when have you been up?”

  “Woke up at seven. Had something to do, so I set an alarm.”

  Jonah nodded, narrowing his eyes. “What was on your schedule that was so pressing?”

  “You’ll find out once you finish up the coffee and get your ass out of bed.” I turned with a smile and started to exit, then called back over my shoulder, “Lazy balls.”

  “You love these lazy balls,” Jonah said after me as I left the room.

  “Mhm,” I said, unable to contain the grin, glad Jonah wasn’t there to see.

  I hung out in the living room while I heard Jonah jump in the shower. It was hard for me to not run over to the closed door and tell him to hurry up. Not because I needed the bathroom or anything, but because I was so damn excited to see Jonah’s face when he saw the surprise I had set up for him today. He wasn’t expecting it in the slightest, I was sure of it. I knew he’d be floored the moment we walked outside.

  But he had to get out of the shower first, and Jonah had a habit of taking his time when hot water was involved.

  He finally came out, his hair still a little damp. He wore a white T-shirt that fit snug around his still-damp chest and arms and a pair of khaki shorts that showed off a pair of legs I loved having around my waist.

  “Ready, Mr. Kardashian?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Fox, I only took—”

  “An hour and fifteen.” I raised the stopwatch I had started on my phone. “I kept track.”

  “Bastard,” Jonah said, smiling and snatching the phone from my hand. He cleared it and handed it back. “There, like the shower never happened.”

  “I’ve got a screenshot.”

  “Mega bastard.” Jonah laughed, running a hand through his wet hair. I could smell the lavender soap he used, the coconut shampoo he had lathered. He smelled good, although Jonah always smelled good, coconut or not. I was attracted to every single thing about this man.

  My friend.

  A friend.

  Friend.

  “So what’s the big thing you wanted to show me?” Jonah looked around the living room, taking stock.

  “It’s not in here,” I assured him. I motioned for him to follow me and led him toward the door to the outside.

  “Fox… what did you do?”

  I opened the door and stepped out into the summer heat, the humidity taking my breath for a split second.

  I heard a gasp from Jonah when he stepped out and looked to my driveway. He had a hand over his mouth, another behind his head, his eyes wide. “What the… Fox! How the hell?” He ran over to the white Mercedes Benz, its classic frame bent and rusted, but the soul of the car still there. I could tell it was an expensive model, especially for back in the day when it was made. It had a smooth and curved hood with two big rounded headlights, one of them cracked and clouded. There were dents in the bumper and a couple of scratches on the doors, but other than that, the car looked like it had been incredibly well kept.

  “How’d you get this thing over here?” Jonah was walking around the car, looking as if he was witnessing a ghost starting up a conga line.

  “I called your brother. He gave me
your parents’ info. I knew you were keeping the car in their garage, so I asked if I could get it towed to my driveway. I told them I had space and wanted to work on the car with you.”

  “They must have been so happy to get this thing out of there.”

  “I think I saw your mom shed a tear.” I laughed, feeling overcome with the shock and happiness that was flowing off Jonah like a river. “I wanted to work on it with you. I know you and your grandpa were close to getting it street ready. I didn’t want you giving up on it.”

  “Fox… Jesus, you’re… I can’t… thank you.” He came over to me, opening his arms and pulling me into a tight embrace. Before letting go fully, he surprised me with a kiss on the side of my neck. Something very intimate, powerful, and something that further made me want to throw our “friendship” label into a fucking garbage disposal.

  I watched as Jonah took appraisal of the car, walking in wide circles around it before getting in close, as if seeing a long-lost friend for the first time in years. His eyes were wide and reflecting the sun that beat down on us. There was a palm tree on the sidewalk that offered some shade and relief.

  “All right,” I said, clapping my hands. “Let’s get to fixing.” I went over to my garage door and opened it by tapping the password into the panel. The big white door rose, creaking and groaning as it did. I ducked under and went for a box of tools I had sitting on a shelf. There was a decent layer of dust on the box’s red exterior. I blew as much off as I could and returned back to Jonah, who was currently on his knees examining the front tire.

  “Here, not sure what you need exactly.” I placed the box gently down by his feet. He looked up at me, gratitude still flowing freely from his expression.

  “Fox, you really don’t have to.”

  “I want to.” I got down on his level. “I want to get greasy with you.”

  “There are easier ways to do that, you know? Ways that involve air-conditioning.”

  “I don’t mind a little sweat.”

  Jonah smiled, that baby face of his looking a little different to me now. He still had a youthful look about him, that was for sure, but now, when I looked into those depthless blue eyes, I saw a grown man, one who had the power to complete me and devastate me all in the same breath.