“Borrowed your jeans. Took them off again when I saw your bare ass.”
“I had a sheet on. How did you see my bare ass?”
He smirked, then offered me the backside view as he walked into the bathroom. My cock sent a waving hand to my brain. “Don’t even think about it,” he called over his shoulder. “It took twenty minutes to wake you up, and now we don’t have time.” The door clicked shut, and my smile fell.
Without Peter as a distraction, the dream from this morning was suddenly a heavy weight on my spirit. I had dreamt it just moments before I had fully awakened, when my subconscious drew me towards a memory rather than a fantasy.
Six months ago Marta and I were sat at her breakfast table. We had been surrounded by soft sunlight from the wide kitchen window. Asa had just turned three and was squirming in her mother’s arms. In the dream-memory everything was the same, except both of them were blurry, and only part of the conversation was clear.
Marta kissed Asa’s freckled cheek. “Håll dig lugn, mitt lilla barn.”
“Hole day lung, meet Lila Barn?” I asked.
Marta laughed. “This is good, Oz. You learn yourself Swedish.”
I smiled and stirred the coffee which magically appeared at my elbow. “What’s it mean?”
“Hold yourself still, my little child.”
Barn. Child. Barn lager. I’d never taken the time to find the name, but Marta had opened a store not too long ago. Dave’s nervousness came back to me from yesterday.
But barn could have meant anything—in any language. Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch. Come to think of it, I recalled seeing bairn as a Scottish word in a book once. So the word alone wasn’t causing the gears in my brain to shift into overdrive. It was a preponderance of the clues gathered into one nightmarish thought.
Alvarado, at the very least, smuggled illegal aliens into the country. The cash Luis and I were tracking was probably money being laundered through enterprises owned by, according to Peter, cops. Back when Peter saw the list of businesses on the computer, he’d only recognized a few. Was one of the businesses Marta’s?
There were too many coincidences to actually be coincidence. A foreboding itch started in the back of my head.
Dave had arrested Alvarado.
Dave’s strange visit the other day.
Dave’s nervous tapping last night.
Dave’s Swedish wife who ran a Swedish children’s clothing store.
Barn, the Swedish word for child.
What did lager mean?
Throwing on some jeans and a t-shirt, I hurried down to the living room to grab my laptop, only to freeze on the landing as I stared at the far wall.
Everyone’s a Critic
“Jesus,” I whispered.
Cai turned around, a rainbow of speckles dotting his face, arms and hands. A large streak of blue fit into the crease of his smile and there was a yellow blotch next to one dimple. “Um. Not finished. It’s not finished. The mural. The mural is not finished.”
“Jesus,” I said again, words failing me. Not finished, but no less spectacular. Or at least the third of it he had completed was. From across the room, the gothic style church looked as if each individual brick was painted in detail, including the grooves and cracks. They weren’t the traditional red or grey bricks, but a mixture of blues, reds and yellows which, like the rest of the painting, were surreal colors creating a realistic image.
“Stunning work,” Agent One said, leaning against the wall just outside the kitchen. His gun was holstered neatly against his ribcage, and he was sipping what smelled deliciously like coffee.
“Stunning,” I agreed. Since words were failing me, I wasn’t above borrowing. I smiled at Cai’s pleased bounce onto his toes. “Have you slept at all?”
“Um. Yessir?” His face turned an unusual shade of crimson.
“You’re a terrible liar, Cai,” I chided. The agent smiled into his cup. “That coffee?” I asked.
“I took the liberty.” The man nodded at my coffee maker. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“If you left some for me, I might kiss you.” The agent’s brow rose.
“Riley is gay,” Cai announced. Riley coughed, spilling his coffee down his chin.
“Interesting,” I said and narrowed my eyes at the man who disappeared into the kitchen to clean off his shirt. “Riley is also my age. Did you notice that, too?” In a moment so reminiscent of Peter that my heart ached, Cai bit his lip and turned his blushing face back to the wall. “Peter’s going to be down soon to take you to your appointment.” I nodded to the overalls where the blue material peeked through streaks and splatters of paint.