"More deals?" Zachary asks.
"We have enough deals, don't you think? But I want you to say yes."
"Yes."
"But you don't know the request yet," Gustavo protests and laughs.
"It can't be all that bad," Zachary answers, squeezing Gustavo's shoulders, "since you are not an unreasonable guy. What did I just agree to?"
"A portrait."
"Of me?"
"Yes, but not like anything you have seen before," Gustavo answers. "A portrait of you, but in an expressive form stretching deeper than realism."
"Do I get to keep my clothes on?" Zachary asks, raising his eyebrows.
"Maybe. We have to see where the session takes us."
"Oh really? The session?"
"I am speaking about real art," Gustavo says. "I want to capture your facial features and temperament and energy. But if I need to include your body too, for reasons of my own, perhaps you would agree?"
"When, Gustavo?"
"When all of our troubles are behind us."
"You sound certain that you want to be around me once all of our troubles are behind us," Zachary says.
Gustavo looks into Zachary's dark eyes and nods. Their faces are separately by mere inches. Gustavo puts his hand on Zachary's knee and lightly traces geometric patterns on the denim fabric. Zachary lifts his index finger under Gustavo's chin and leans forward and tenderly kisses his top lip. Gustavo responds by tilting his head upward, parting his lips, pleading for more.
Zachary kisses his mouth. They slink downward into reclining positions on the couch, pressing their clothed bodies together, face to face. While Zachary holds him close, Gustavo's fingers explore, touching Zachary's muscular arms, back, and hips, feeling the power radiating from his body.
Gustavo nuzzles Zachary's neck, discovering the scent and taste of his skin. Their strained erections bump together, under their jeans, with every movement of their bodies. Their kissing intensifies and Zachary wraps his leg around Gustavo's legs.
"Come to my bed," Gustavo whispers, unbuttoning Zachary's shirt.
Zachary follows Gustavo to his room. They slowly undress each other in the dark. When down to their underwear-Zachary's boxers and Gustavo's boxer briefs-Zachary lifts Gustavo into his arms and kisses him while setting him on his bed. Zachary climbs on top of Gustavo and hesitates.
"This is beautiful," Zachary whispers.
"You are beautiful," Gustavo replies, in the same hushed and intimate tone of voice.
"I cannot remember the last time I craved this sensual touch and ever felt it was genuine."
"My touch is real."
"I know it is."
"I adore you."
"We won't spoil it by going too fast," Zachary says. "I want to hold you all night long. And kiss you. Touch and be touched. Sex will wait though. Okay?"
"Yes," Gustavo says. "This is what I want too. A natural progression."
Zachary gently squeezes and kneads Gustavo's body, smells his neck and arms, and licks his chest and toes. Gustavo frees himself of any worries and submits to Zachary, savoring every sensation from the contact of his hands, mouth, and tongue. Gustavo, unaware of his own aura, beholds the lively bursts and flows of color-burgundy and fire red-surrounding Zachary. He watches it transform as Zachary himself reacts to Gustavo's body and their evolving intimacy.
Zachary lays on top of Gustavo again. As they roll to their sides and continue kissing, Gustavo brushes the tips of his fingertips across every inch of Zachary's back, then tickles the sensitive skin at the back of his neck and massages the back of his scalp.
After two hours of sensual exploration, they break for a drink of juice and to stretch their legs. Then the men return to Gustavo's room and fall asleep in each other's arms.
Zachary's phone thunders alive at precisely 3 o'clock in the morning. Zachary leaps out of bed, grabs his phone from the pocket of his jeans piled on the floor, and adjusts his eyes to the image just texted to his phone. The picture is of two men propped back against a stucco wall. Nathaniel, on the left, bruised and bleeding from his nose, looking upward, at someone or something above the camera. Aleksey, on the right, his eyes closed and his chin drooped to the base of his neck, with smeared bloodstains on his scalp. Along the bottom rim of the photograph is a graphic block of text. In large print, the word BOULDER CITY is spelled out in capital letters. Below it, in small text, are the instructions Zachary must obey to save them.
PART 4
34
Clues
Aleksey Nabokov rolls his shoulders, flexes his constrained arms, and twists his wrists as much as the binds allow. Doing so, every few minutes, wards off his fears of developing a blood clot. He exercises his legs, which are permitted the freedom of foot-long steps with a fitted cord, by lying on his back and rolling his hips upward to bend and stretch.
The carpeted floor is not the only comfort in the tiny bedroom. If the ruse is to provide coziness, then deprive him of it for emotional torment, his captors have not yet played that psychological game on him. Aleksey contemplates why he is not in a garage, basement, or windowless closet. The room-likely originally designed by the architect to be a nursery, yoga room, or reading room-has a twin size bed with a comforter and matching pillows. A flat screen television is affixed high on the wall. Aleksey knows it is not there for his entertainment, but to blare out continuous noise so he does not hear the voices or any other sounds echoing throughout the rest of the house. Inexplicably, the channel is set to a Spanish language station without a remote control or any means for Aleksey to change the channel or alter the volume. If the person selecting the channel expected it to be a form of punishment, or simply a barrage of unintelligible noises, she or he were mistaken. Aleksey is fluent in Spanish and sometimes watches Spanish language television of his own accord.
But the television monitor is not his focus as the hours continue to pass. Aleksey easily blocks out the distractions and keeps his thoughts resolutely on solving his dilemmas. Aiding his efforts is the equable view out of the bedroom window, tinted slightly green, most likely with a coating of ultraviolet light protection. An encumbered view of a desert valley tapers down to a sapphire-covered mountain lake.
Aleksey knows this precise landscape and his location. He once stayed with Zachary in a nearby, pirate-themed resort. Aleksey knows he is in one of the splendid homes lining Keys Drive or Woodacre Drive, by the northern tip of Boulder City, Nevada, on the mountainside facing eastward to Lake Mead, with the Great Basin Highway less than half a mile to the south. One of the engineering marvels of the world, Hoover Dam, is concealed behind mountains four miles to the southeast, and Las Vegas is less than an hour's drive away.
Aleksey realizes his captors are not concerned with his knowledge of the house's location. Besides the option of stuffing him inside a windowless room, they could have affixed eye pieces or taken other steps to hinder his vision. This may be overconfidence, but it is not ineptitude. The sophistication of the operation to hijack him in Laughlin by armed motorcycle riders rules out amateur skill or competence.
However, his other primary clues were not willingly presented by his captors.
The four motorcyclists who captured him had voices Aleksey had not heard before. He never saw their faces under their helmets. The one in the backseat with him-a portly woman with a gruff voice-injected him with a tranquilizer just moments after the carjacking.
But the burly man guarding him just on the other side of the bedroom door is the same man who brings his food and escorts him to the bathroom. This man wears a lucha libre mask, composed of blue and silver lycra, that covers all of his head and face except for his eyes, broad nose, and mouth. The problem is these facial features are familiar to Aleksey, who has tremendous skill recognizing and remembering faces. Aleksey cannot yet identify this man, but he will not stop trying until the mystery is solved.
Aleksey is convinced that he has met this man before for another reason too. The guard never speaks in his presence. He doesn't answer Aleksey's questions with even a grunt. Aleksey suspects the Mexican mask may be intended to further an assumption that the guard does not speak because of not knowing English. Aleksey is becoming more convinced this is a deceit. His guard is not speaking because of a language barrier, but because he does not want to take any risk that Aleksey could recognize his voice.
This realization brings up more questions that Aleksey tackles. Why would the captors in a sophisticated operation even chance choosing a familiar guard for him? Or is the guard remaining quiet because he is planted to be on Aleksey's side and does not want Aleksey to give his identity away to the lead captors?
Nonetheless, perhaps the most confounding clue of all emerged just hours ago before dawn. The guard and another masked person hauled Aleksey downstairs, against a stucco wall outside on the porch, and trained a handgun toward his heart. Moments later, Nathaniel Balder-dazed, bleeding, and also handcuffed-was led out with a masked guard on each arm. They slammed Nathaniel onto the wall beside Aleksey, banging the back of his head with a thud, and one of the guards held up a phone camera. Before clicking the button to capture the shot, one of the guards wiped the blood pouring down onto Nathaniel's lips and brusquely smeared it across Aleksey's head.