Love Lies Bleeding (13 page)

"You started it," Leo whispered.

Anderson felt him coming closer. He could barely lift his head but he did and came face to face with Leo's cock. Without thinking he hooked his finger under the band of the condom and rolled it off. Discarding it on the floor, he took the dick into his mouth, milking it until Leo climaxed against his tongue.

* * * *

Long after he'd managed to sooth Anderson to sleep, Leo jerked awake to a pain-filled cry. He blinked for a moment, wondering where the sound came from until Anderson began struggling beside him.

"Please! No!" Anderson shouted. "Let me go!"

Leo jerked upright and reached over to shake Anderson gently. When that didn't work and the man continued thrashing about, Leo spanked him hard on his ass. Anderson's eyes snapped opened and he instantly reared up, pinning Leo to the bed. His eyes were wild and scared as he stared into Leo's soul.

"Anderson? It's me. It's Leo."

"Leo?" Anderson whispered like a child who was afraid of the dark. "Leo…"

He rolled away then and Leo pushed to his elbow. He thought he knew precisely what was happening in Anderson's head when he slept. He was scared, frustrated, and sad about his father. Leo knew what it was like to lose a parent—it killed you slowly on the inside and there was nothing to be done about it. He caressed Anderson's back gently until he knew the professor was sleeping before climbing out of bed.

* * * *

The sun wasn't fully out yet, but already Leo was sipping from his first cup of coffee before he woke Anderson. He sat on his side of the bed and watched Anderson silently. He wanted to leave Anderson where he was and run to Elmont but Anderson was right. He didn't want to leave Anderson alone with a killer on the loose. Taking a breath he reached over and brushed his fingers gently against Anderson's shoulder. There was something there—something he was feeling for this man and he was afraid to trust it. How could he trust something he fought so hard to keep at bay?

But one touch led to another and before he knew it, he was brushing his lips gently against the flesh. When Anderson finally moaned and stirred, Leo lifted his head and their gazes locked.

"We have to stop waking up like this," Anderson whispered, wrapping his arms around Leo's neck.

"Are you complaining?"

"Not a chance…"

Leo was about to roll over atop Anderson when there was crash just outside the door. He sprang from the bed and reached for his gun on the bedside table. Darting out the door, he was in time to see a shadow rounding the corner.

"Anderson, stay in the room!" he hollered and took off running. The front door slammed and he pursued the fleeing figure. "Stop! Police!" he called, aiming his gun. "NYPD!"

But he gave up on the idea of firing because they were in an enclosed space in a public apartment. He knew with the commotion, someone would stick their head out the door to see what was happening.

"Son of a bitch!" he swore.

He holstered his gun and continued the chase. The head start his prey had was too much but the person dropped something. He holstered his gun outside, looking around to see if he could catch a glimpse of the person—but nothing. Swearing, he continued up the stairs again and searched their path until he found a cigarette box. He remembered seeing it fall as he chased the man from the building. He yanked his sleeve down over his fingers and picked up the box then turned it over. Though the logo on it looked familiar, he couldn't quite put his finger on why it would.

Back in his apartment, he locked the door behind him and found Anderson. The professor dove into his arms and held on tightly.

"Are you all right?" Anderson questioned. "Who was that?"

"I don't know. He got away." Leo caressed Anderson's back. "I'm not even going to bother with prints—he was wearing gloves. But he dropped something. I'm going to have to call in a favor to see if there's anything on it. In the meantime—you shower then we can go."

Anderson lifted his head from Leo's shoulder. For a moment they simply stared at each other before he walked away. Leo couldn't help feeling a little cheated as he watched Anderson's perfect ass walking away from him. He was going to make sure he had another one of the best fuck sessions he'd ever had in his life until the intruder interrupted. The moment was gone now—his cock jerked then but he simply took a breath. "When I get my hands on this motherfucker he's going to wish he'd never been born."

While Anderson was gone, he called into the station to get a forensic agent to his place. With the conversation over, he entered the kitchen and looked around. They still hadn't had a chance to get groceries but they still have some food left over from dinner the night before. Looking at it did nothing for Leo, so he closed the fridge and gathered his things.

"Andy?"

"Coming."

He waited until Anderson walked slowly into the kitchen before he spoke again. "I'm going to have to get the guys in the lab to work on the box the intruder dropped."

In a drawer, he pulled out the piece of paper he'd found at Anderson's place and unfolded it.

"Do you recognize this?"

Anderson took it and looked at it for a while before shrugging. "No. Should I?"

"I found it at your place. It may be nothing but someone hid it under one of your drawers."

"The handwriting is not mine and I think I would remember writing something that—wait… I know what this is. I've never seen it this detailed, but I know what this is. Do you have internet access here?"

Leo nodded. He hurried into his bedroom and grabbed his laptop before returning, turning it on, and putting it on the counter. His heart was racing like never before. He took a breath.

Anderson typed away furiously at the keyboard and something about that turned Leo on. He bit his lower lip and held his breath then shook his head as though he thought that would clear his mind of what he would rather be doing than work. "Tell me what's going on."

"This is a code," Anderson said, without looking up. "I learned about it in university. I took a first year bird course to get an easy A and it was on serial killers."

"Em… what?"

"Yeah… Jack the Ripper, BTK, Ted Bundy…"

"Andy, I know what a serial killer is. I'm a cop."

Anderson stopped typing and glanced at Leo quickly before turning back to the screen. "The code is called Satan's Formula. In the nineteen hundreds—I'm talking the early nineteen hundreds, around the exact ending of the eighteen hundreds—women started going missing in Germany. I'm talking in broad daylight someone would just vanish. Then two days after the disappearances, the women would be found, naked and headless, on a public road. On her body would be writing—numbers and letters. This went on for about eight years with no one catching on. Everyone just thought the killer was just sick."

"They all are."

"Then around 1908 this student saw it and began working on it. He was a mathematician—a brilliant one. He finally cracked the code. You see, the women were vanishing from around the Die Bibliothek library. He hypothesized that the letters were author initials—and not just any author, but the king of gore."

"Edgar Allan Poe?"

Anderson smiled, obviously surprised he knew that. Leo blushed.

"Right. Poe died in 1849 so he had plenty of chances to write a whole bunch of stuff both published and unpublished—enough for this code."

"Okay… But how do we know how to decode this. What are the numbers for? What if this guy isn't using Poe for his?"

"There's a small chance of that but people are creatures of habit. They rarely deviate from the original codex. Let's try the first one." Anderson picked up the paper and looked at it. "Every period means the end, right? So the first three letters are from the author's name. This one is easy. EAP. T. 1 1 is Edgar Allan Poe and the numbers are… the first word in his first work."

"What the hell?"

Anderson patted his shoulder but turned again to the computer. "So, Edgar Allan Poe. And the T is for Tales—and move this over here… this first code is…. the!"

"All that for one word?"

Anderson nodded proudly. He was so beautiful at that moment Leo couldn't control himself. He kissed Anderson just as the doorbell rang.

"I'll handle this; you keep working on that. Can you work while I drive?"

"Sure can. But we're going to need something from my house first."

"We'll stop by your place. Let me deal with this."

Leo exited the room with what Anderson had just said to him floating through his head. He handed over the box with strict instructions then gathered a few things for their road trip. He put in a call to Daniel but his partner didn't pick up so he simply left a message. Finally, he wrapped his arms around Anderson's body from behind and kissed the back of his neck.

"I know you're busy at work but can I talk you into getting in the car?"

Anderson moaned. "Let me finish this word… pendulum?"

"Come on. Road trip, remember?"

"Right. I'll grab my tablet at home because it has wireless internet to take wherever."

Before they left, however, Leo took a moment to kiss Anderson and hold him against his body. Perhaps it was to reassure them both this could end differently than with their tears. Taking a breath, he released Anderson and took his hand. He lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to the warm flesh there.

"Let's do this," Anderson smiled.

Chapter Thirteen

"This makes no earthly sense," Anderson muttered, as he scribbled the final word on the piece of paper. He stared at it for a while and shook his head before re-doing the first few words. He banged his first into the side of the side of the car.

"Whoa!" Leo called. "Chill out for a minute."

"Easy for you to say. This shit isn't driving your ass crazy."

"I take it you're finished. Tell me what it says."

"The pendulum falls. Light a descent into the pit. The bells tell a perverse tale to the red death portrait."

"What?" Leo questioned

Anderson looked away from the paper and frowned deeply at Leo. "That's what the paper said. All those fucking numbers and letters—and it's a fucking piece of crap." He tossed his hands up. "I really don't get it. Who would go through all this trouble to write a poem?"

"Maybe it's more than that. Put it down for a few minutes."

"I can't."

Anderson began going over the code again, just to make sure he didn't miss anything or screw up the cipher."

"Andy—come on. Put it down a sec. Let's talk."

"This your way of saying if I take a break and come back to it, I'll have fresh eyes?"

Leo laughed. "You got me."

Anderson took a breath and placed his stuff on the backseat, stretched his legs out some. He turned his head to watch Leo eyeing the traffic before him with what Anderson could describe as contempt. Reaching a hand over, he rested it against the headrest of Leo's seat then dug his fingers gently into Leo's hair.

"Can I talk to you about something?" Leo asked.

"Of course."

"I haven't been with anyone in about three years," Leo confided. "It's not for the lack of possible men. I just—I don't know; I got comfortable with being alone."

"Why me? Is it because of my father?"

"Don't be silly. I don't know why. It's not like I went into all of this thinking I would seduce you or anything like that. It just happened. The truth is, I didn't fight it all that hard."

Anderson listened to those words and turned his attention back to the road, just as traffic picked up. It was taking them longer than it should to get to Maspeth, traveling on the I-495. Anderson was never a fan of long drives, even the not-so-long ones. Road trips were a pain in the ass on the best of days. When they were a little way away from Maspeth, he took a deep breath.

"You didn't have a choice, Leo. Frankly, I'm just that fabulous."

Leo laughed.

"I was thinking about it too, you know," Anderson spoke seriously. "I just didn't want to push too hard. I tend to do that—the pushing too hard bit."

"I get it."

"So where does this leave us?"

Leo inhaled noisily. "At point B."

"I see. Can we stop? I need to get something to drink. I feel a little light-headed."

"Yeah. Sure. I have to call Coach Jessops and let him know we're coming."

"You didn't before?"

Leo shook his head. "Didn't want to spook him. I have a squad car keeping an eye on things."

They pulled into the parking lot of a roadside diner and while Leo went to use the bathroom, Anderson sat in a booth by the window. He ordered coffee for both of them and after the waitress left, he turned to look outside. There was nothing but a stretch of road, with cars and trucks whizzing both ways. Two cars down from theirs was a blue truck with tinted windows. It seemed familiar somehow and while Anderson tried figuring out where he'd seen it, he sipped from his coffee.

"Hey," Leo flopped into the booth across from him. "You all right?"

"Yeah. I feel like I'm slowing you down. I don't mean to be a pain."

"Don't worry about it. I called Coach and he said it's okay if we stopped in. I didn't tell him why."

"That's good…" Anderson's cell phone rang and he pulled it out to stare at the face. Making a face he activated it and pressed it to his ear. "Hey. I meant to call you…"

"It's fine," Byung replied. "Listen I got a call this morning from the funeral home. Your father's body was released. Did you get a chance to look over those numbers I sent you?"

"Yeah. I'll be back in town tomorrow… I think." He looked over at Leo who nodded. "And I'll go down and we can finalize the funeral arrangements. While Leo talks to his coach, I'll make some calls to inform people of the upcoming funeral."

"You all right?"

Anderson looked at Leo and took a breath. "Yeah. I'm fine. I promise. When this is all over, I'll take you out for a drink."

"You buying?"

Anderson chuckled. "Yeah. I'm buying. Thanks, Bee."

After their orders were taken, he lifted his coffee to his lips and took a few sips. Leo was looking into his cup as though he expected it to tell him some grand secret. Pulling his eyes away, he inhaled deeply and his mind went back to the riddle he'd deciphered. It didn't make any sense to him no matter how many times he played it over in his head. It must have taken someone a long time to write all those codes using just Edgar Allan Poe titles. Then again, he could be wrong.