Needing (5 page)

Louise had given just enough information to make him want to catch this fucker quickly, catch the people doing those experiments. Using sugar strands was ingenious. Lacing food with them, food kids liked to eat. Where were they distributing these doughnuts or whatever the fuck they put the strands on? A shop? Free on some stall? In PrivoLabs itself?

Langham’s apparent lack of concern, his almost languid perusal of worn-down carpet fibres and his clearly obvious incredulousness over the drug thing pissed Oliver the hell off.

“I mean,” Oliver said, “there’s only Louise to consider here. Only a dead woman who died because she knew something she shouldn’t. Only a kid left without a mother—a kid currently in hiding with his grandmother, who has to put aside her grieving to make sure she does everything right for the kid. Only a load of other kids and their parents suffering at the hands of some mental bastards. Hey, staring at the carpet is a great solution. Yeah, it really helps solve the case.” He stood abruptly and paced. “You’re getting on my fucking nerves staring at the floor like that.”

Langham gave Oliver a dark look—one of the darkest he’d ever been given. “I’ll ignore that outburst. Put it down to you being tired and overprotective of the victim. Distraught over the kids being plied with drugs. Looking at the carpet, staring into space helps me—”

“Overprotective? Over-fucking-protective? Are you deliberately trying to rile me?” Oliver moved to the door and curled his hand around the knob, his intent to storm out. Langham wouldn’t solve this case as fast without him, and Oliver had a mind to follow the leads himself. Anything to get something done and done now.

Langham strode up behind him, covering Oliver’s hand with his. “Listen, you’re flying high on adrenaline, with the need to get to the bottom of this
now
, but you
know
it doesn’t work like that. You get like this every time, and every time I tell you the same thing. Slow down. Think things through. And we’ll get there. We always do.”

Langham’s voice, the timbre and reverberation of sound, went straight to Oliver’s cock. Angry that the detective’s closeness, his words, had switched him from pissed off to horny in a heartbeat, Oliver silently berated himself. Louise was dead, had come to him for help, and here he was getting a hard cock instead.

He sighed, blew out hard and long.
Get a fucking grip. Life goes on after someone dies. Cocks don’t stay soft just because…shit, they just don’t stay soft.

“You’re right,” he said. “As usual. And I
hate
admitting that, you know that, don’t you?”

Langham’s chuckle should have incensed Oliver more, should have made him yank the door open and strut out never to return, but it didn’t. No, he remained where he was, soaking up the remnants of that laugh as it lingered in his mind, all around him. In his groin.

“Shit! Langham, you fuck me the hell off, you know that?”

“Yep.”

Langham drew closer, his breath warming Oliver’s neck. Damn it, but Oliver was lost now. Lost in Langham’s closeness. His scent, that spicy, tangy aroma that was a mix of cologne and fresh sweat. The heat of the detective’s hand as it tightened over his. The press of an erection to his backside.

Jesus Christ… For the love of God…

“You need to, uh, step away, Langham.”

“I do?”

There it was again, that tone of voice, hardening Oliver’s cock some more.

“Yeah. Step the hell away before we—”

“Do something we’ll regret?”

“Something like that.”

“So you’d regret it, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. No. I mean… Crap! Of course I wouldn’t bloody regret it. But you might.”

“What makes you think that?”

If Langham didn’t take a step back and remove that hard-on from Oliver’s arse… Now wasn’t the time, was it? To indulge in a fuck, or at the very least some frantic petting. Oliver’s mind went into overdrive. This was the first time Langham had crossed the invisible line between them, one that had always been there without them ever having to mention it. Yeah, they’d flirted, made it clear they liked one another, but shit, why was Langham acting like this today? Why now? What had made him step up to the plate when he’d said he cared for him as a
friend?

Oliver’s heart raced at the same speed as the questions firing through his mind. “Um, you’ve never…never come this close to me before. Not like this. Not—”

“With my cock hard? That what you were going to say?”

“Well, no, but you have a point.”

“Hell, yeah, I have a damn point, and it’s throbbing like a son of a bitch.”

Oliver imagined that point, that rounded tip of a cock he’d only ever dreamt about. Yeah, he’d studied the swell of it as it rested beneath Langham’s zipper—studied it on more than one occasion when the detective’s attention had been on anything but Oliver’s face—but this? Imagining it like this? When it was so close?

Fuck.

He turned, removing his hand from the doorknob and instantly regretting the loss of skin contact. Still, pressed chest to chest with Langham instead wasn’t something to be sniffed at. Having Langham look at him, staring deep into his eyes the way he was… That more than made up for skin on skin. Oliver knew the signs of lust when he saw them, just not on Langham’s face, and it was alien seeing them there. Oh, he’d imagined that, too, the look he was getting now, but had never thought he’d receive it. They worked together, had a drink in a bar after a long day’s work, got close to one another in the car, arms brushing as Langham shifted gears, but nothing like this.

Nothing so sexual and goddamn erotic.

“It’s about time we acknowledged this,” Langham said, lifting his hands to cup them on Oliver’s shoulders.

He needs to take those hands away. If he doesn’t…
“It is? Oh, right.”

What else could he say? He hadn’t been expecting this. If he had, maybe he could have come out with one of his witty answers, some retort to have Langham laughing, have them back on the even keel they had been on before. Instead, he was floundering for something to say that wouldn’t offend Langham, but at the same time would get the detective to walk away. Although, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. His cock pressed against Oliver’s was damn fine, and he wondered what it would feel like without clothing between them.

Hot. Soft.

And he wanted it.

“There’s something there, Oliver, between us.”

“There’s something between us all right,” he said, trying for lightness, a little banter to ease the raging ache inside him. “But now isn’t, uh, the time to—”

“Do anything about it?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re right, of course, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to get my cock out, get yours out, and—”

“Okay, enough!” Oliver put his hands on Langham’s chest—fuck, that felt good—and gently pushed him away. He cursed himself immediately, but shit, anyone could knock on the door at any time. “Someone might catch us doing something we shouldn’t.” He strode away to his chair, hoping that Louise would come back so he could concentrate on her instead of his engorged dick and the feelings swimming through him.

“Shouldn’t?” Langham followed him, planted his hands on the armrests and loomed over Oliver. “That what you think? That we shouldn’t?”

Oliver looked up at him, lost again in those damn eyes. “Not shouldn’t. I meant… You
know
what I meant. We’re working. We need to concentrate on that, not—”

“Having a hard and hot fuck.”

Oliver’s stomach rolled over. Man, Langham’s one sentence had him undecided on what the hell to do. This was an opportunity to put an end to the sexual tension between them, to assuage the gnawing, sexy-as-fuck beat inside him, to stop their delicate dance and make whatever they felt official. Out in the open.

“Yeah. Here isn’t the right place. If we get caught you’d be raked over the bloody coals. Lose your job for fucking in your office. Not a good move, man.”

Langham straightened, took his hands off the chair arms. “Put like that, I can see your point.”

He stared at the carpet again, only this time it didn’t piss Oliver off. He was glad of the space between them. The silence.

Langham looked up, straight at Oliver. “So if I walk away now, will it be another six months of knowing you before we get that close again? You going to dilly-dally about, avoiding the issue?”

“No. If we’re in a different place and something happens, then yeah, I can deal with that.”
I think.

“So we’re done just for now.”

“Yeah. Just for now.”

“Good.”

In less time than it took Oliver to swallow the lump of emotion in his throat, Langham was all business again. He walked over to his desk and sat, hands splayed on his blotter.

“So, as we were discussing before… Someone’s feeding people drugs that make them kill. The first, as far as we know, is someone who wears a wig and mask.”

“It isn’t all that inconceivable, the drug thing,” Oliver said, leaning forward to hide his erection that didn’t fancy going away any time soon. “I mean, look at me. Look what I do. There’s no explanation for that. Might not be a reason why drugs can turn people into killers.”

“Yeah, but speaking to the dead… Lots of people have that ability. Lots of people have been able to prove the dead exist by what they get told. But a man going around dressed as a fucking woman, made to kill by some chemical? No, I don’t believe that shit.”

“Many things seem unbelievable. Take this, for instance. Demons and shit exist. I know—I’ve spoken to one.”

“You have?”

“Yeah, years ago, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. And I saw him in my head. He showed himself to me. His eyes glowed.”

Langham huffed out a laugh—of hilarity or nervousness, Oliver wasn’t sure.

“Okay.” Langham stood and paced in front of Oliver. “We can talk about that another time, if you like. So what now?”

“How do I fucking know? I need Louise to come back, tell me more.”

“And that might be in the next few minutes, an hour, three days or not at all. We can’t rely on her. Got to do something ourselves.”

“I know that, and I wanted to before you… Look, forget the ins and outs of why the drugs work. They just do. We’ve got other information to go on. PrivoLabs doing experiments on kids. They’re somehow getting children to eat food with sugar strands on them—they’ve got to contain the drugs. Sick much?”

“Yeah, but that’s a bit delicate, going to Privo. We can’t just storm in there and demand they show us their experiment records.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have proof they’re doing anything, so we can’t get a warrant. Use your damn head, Oliver. All we have is some dead woman’s word.”

Langham had a point—another, less visible one—but Oliver believed Louise, knew she was telling the truth.

“We do have proof. That guy left those strands on Louise’s body.”

“Fuck, yeah.” Langham snatched up the phone and barked orders to some unfortunate on the other end. He slammed the phone down. “Forensics will be on it…when they’re on it. No sense of bloody haste, that lot.”

“So, while we wait, we interview Mark Reynolds. Then Louise’s kid—he might have seen the guy when he went to her house. Jeez, who’s the fucking detective here, me or you?”

Langham shot him another dark look. “I’ll ignore that comment too. Put it down to sexual frustration.”

Oliver opened his mouth to give the detective what for, then closed it again as Langham’s laugh filled the room.

“Fuck you, Langham.”

“Yeah, you will do.” He smiled. “In the meantime, we have someone to ask a shitload of questions.”

“Mark Reynolds?”

“Damn fucking right it’s Mark Reynolds.”

Chapter Five

Funny how they went straight back into work mode. Out of the office and in Langham’s car, Oliver was less horny and more focused. Unease at interviewing a guy who might not want to answer their questions made him shift a little in his seat. What if the bloke had been threatened to keep quiet? What if Langham had to haul his arse into the police station in order to get some answers? Even then the man might not play ball. Fright would keep his mouth shut. Shit, if some guy with murder in his eyes had told Oliver to zip it, he’d damn well zip it.

Langham drove out of the city, their journey taking them to some out-of-the-way place called Lower Repton Oliver had only heard of but not visited. A tiny hamlet wasn’t his ideal destination, but he was pleasantly surprised by the quaintness of the area. Cottages flanked the roadside, and a small, Cotswold stone pub, Pickett’s Inn, sat hunched on the bend in the road like a decrepit old man, its roof bowed, walls bulging outward.

Oliver shuddered. The place might be quaint, but something was off here. He sensed many spirits lurking nearby and imagined there
would
be a fair few, what with the hamlet being so old. People would have lived here all their lives, dying in their beds.

“Um, which cottage is his?” he asked, anxious to get this interview over and done with. The vibes he was getting freaked him the hell out. “I don’t like it here.”

“Me neither. Maybe it’s the remoteness, but I wouldn’t live here if you paid me.” As they slowly drove along, Langham leant forward over the steering wheel and peered at the cottages. “None of them are numbered. Just named. Reynolds’ records said he lived at number two, but it’s anyone’s guess which end of the road number two is.”

“You could get out and ask.” Oliver nodded at an elderly woman in her front garden, who had come out to nose at what they were doing, no doubt. She held a watering can, which she’d tipped as though she’d really come out to wet the plants, except no water drizzled from the spout. “She’ll know which one we’re looking for.”

Langham drew up to the roadside outside the woman’s aged wooden picket fence and wound down his window. “Excuse me, madam. Which house is number two?”

She squinted and ground her unquestionably false teeth, wispy strands of hair escaping her bun. Her lips looked elasticated, undulating like that. “What you want to know for? Who are you?”

“I’m Detective Langham,” he said, whipping out his badge and showing her. “And I need to speak to the resident. Mark Reynolds?”