Pent Up (22 page)

This didn’t feel like fooling around. Not halfway fooling.

Ruben sucked another lungful of smoke into himself and tried to imagine sharing some chick with Andy. Their dicks smashed together inside her while she went out of her skull. Just as fast he could see the lie. The imaginary girl didn’t have a face, and the thing that got him boned up was the thought of Andy losing control and craning forward to kiss him hard and whisper to him in Spanish.

Something made him look up at Andy’s floor. Not a sound or a light, but a hankering. Jesus. The only thing wrong was that Andy was farther away than he had been for weeks. The only danger he faced was Ruben copping a feel.

Days later, and Ruben’s fingers could still remember the wet slip of Andy’s hip as he came out of the shower. Ruben’s palm remembered the firm handful of muscle and bone it had cupped for a heartbeat, then tasting his slick hand. Out of control.

He pulled at the cigarette again. A breeze shifted the muggy air and he wiped his damp chest absently. Playing cops and robbers and mooning over this guy wasn’t gonna make his job any easier.

And if he was, y’know, that way, gay or whatever… 880 Park was no place to find out, fuck knows.

What scared him was the familiarity of the feeling. The nagging sense that his life was a gray, muffled dustbowl unless he turned one direction or the other. Just a different kind of addiction. Andy deserved better and Ruben deserved worse.

Standing in his baggy underwears on the thirty-third floor looking out toward the East River, Ruben tried to calculate how long he’d last before a hard dick or a stray word forced him into some horrifying trespass. He had plenty of experience with impending disaster.

He hadn’t expected to like Andy Bauer, let alone respect him, admire him, and whatever the fuck else. He hadn’t felt this way about anyone since, well, ever. Those frantic stabs of affection and anger worried him because they came so fast and felt so good.
Sweeter than bourbon.

He sat down with his feet dangling in the glowing pool.

His feelings had gone way past envy or curiosity. Even with Raggedy Andy dreaming of dividends fifty feet over his head, the impulse to go back upstairs got his heart thumping. The obedience and adoration embarrassed him. This must be what dogs felt like when they heard a key in the lock. Living that close had gotten to him is all. He couldn’t just chalk it up to loneliness, and the last thing he needed to do was put some nice guy at risk by queering out at the wrong moment.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he glanced up, almost expecting Andy to be looking down from the terrace with a shameful crush of his own.
Homo and Juliet.
Wherefore art thou a bum?

Nothing. The penthouse was completely dark. His instincts playing tricks with him again. Most likely, Andy was smacking one out in his shower. All that wet pink skin and his mouth gasping at the floor while water sheeted off his lips.

Ruben’s plump, drowsy cock nudged awake inside his boxers. He dropped his gaze to the glowing pool and the slip-slap of the water around his hairy calves.

He’d leave in the morning. For real, this time. Charlie could move some other talentless goon into Andy’s life, and Ruben would find some nice girl with a round ass who’d help him get his head and dick on straight.

Pfff
. A small sound made him turn his head. No one there. It had been a hushed impact, like a pillow on marble, but the pool deck was silent.

“The hell?”

Had he imagined it? He pulled his dark legs out of the phosphorescent water and rose slowly. The light caught and glittered on the deck at the shallow end of the pool.

A bull’s-eye scatter of splintered glass.

Mindful of his wet feet, he circled to get a better look. A piece of long crystal stem gleamed in the seam between two slabs.

Before he crouched, he knew immediately what it was: one of Andy’s fancy wine glasses from Prague.

He looked up again, craning and squinting up the sheer windows of the sleeping apartments to Andy’s terrace. No light. No movement. No signs of life. The utter stillness chilled him. The wineglass must have fallen from the open rail, but if he expected Andy’s face to be peering down at him, he was disappointed. The penthouse stayed silent as a coiled snake.

Gooseflesh puckered his torso. In his gut he knew: Andy wasn’t alone up there.

Ruben’s hairs stiffened, and he wiped his hands on his bare stomach. “In my shorts. In my fucking shorts.” Why had that seemed like a fine idea? Sneaking out nearly naked for a smoke seemed so idiotic now. He hadn’t been thinking straight. A cold fist squeezed his insides. Andy needed him.

He pivoted and jogged back inside. After the night sky, the uncanny gleam of the white hallways slammed into his eyes, making him blink. Like a rat in an expensive maze, he slipped quickly and quietly toward the hidden service elevator used by the building staff to perform repairs and collect garbage.

He pulled open the door beside the emergency stairs and jabbed the button. His balls shriveled. “Think.” He had no weapon, no protection, no shoes. Ruben forced himself to take long slow breaths and hold his lungs full and empty at the top and bottom of the cycle. Tactical breathing, the army called it. Any more adrenaline in his bloodstream and he’d start to go blind and deaf.

The elevator cranked into life below him, lumbering upward.
Noisy.
The button needed to be held to keep the elevator traveling, so he held it hard with one damp finger. Ruben scanned the little vestibule for some kind of artillery; the only things on offer were empty trashcans and a huge extinguisher.
Hmm.

The elevator stopped and its doors opened. The car was loaded with clear recycling bags.

Was there anything he could use? He shifted the piles of recycling inside in search of anything useful or deadly.
Slim pickings
: stacks of bundled newspaper and bags of shredded bills. On one wall, a folded ironing board being put out to pasture and a cardboard box of wine bottles. Then he saw the body. In one corner, a man in a crumpled uniform: the elderly porter’s face cuddled hard by the heaps of clean garbage.

Barefoot on the cold metal, Ruben crouched beside him to check: a sluggish pulse. The poor guy was breathing, but out cold.

So much for exaggeration.
Andy had tried to warn him, but Ruben had known better. Exactly like all the other times he’d known better even though he didn’t know a thing. Like every other dumbass drunk, he never learned that he’d never learn.

No. This was on him. The elevator would be noisy and he couldn’t risk the old man. The sweat on his skin felt chilly, but he went back to the stairs.

How could he help Andy? Right now he had a hill of paper and a few bottles. Maybe he could iron them to death. No time to waste thinking.

Ruben began climbing toward the deadly mess he’d made upstairs.

HE SWUNG
the bookcase open, thanking Andy for this secret passage which had seemed so stupid on day one.

The library was dim, lit only by the screens on the wall. Hope’s desk had been flung back and papers scattered over the floor, but no blood or fire that Ruben could see in the dull green light.

A low yelp from Andy on the other side of the apartment pushed him into motion.

So Andy was still conscious at least. Maybe they wanted information, and that meant they needed him undamaged. That was something to work with.

Ruben couldn’t be sure how many there were, and right now it almost didn’t matter.

He looked down at his damp boxers and bare feet. His best bet to send them packing was to invite a few more folks to the party. Still, if he just banged on pots and pans, they’d just come in here and kill him. He needed to make a racket big enough to alert the building staff, at least, and the NYPD if he got lucky.

His pants, his cell, and his firearm were in his room and no way could he reach the door except in full view. With the elevator so exposed, he couldn’t run for help, and fuck if he was leaving Andy alone with them.

The terrace.

Ruben eased the glass door open and slid through carefully. Tiles cool under his feet, he hugged the shadowy corner and crept around the corner of his own room toward the bright windows. He couldn’t even activate the digital shades to give himself cover.

A few feet away, through the white brick and glass, he could see the dim outlines of his clothes and his weapons, but he had no way to get at them.

For a moment Ruben wished for a carving knife or a crowbar, then scolded himself. Macho action-hero bullshit. In the real world, these animals would mow him down before he got close enough to do any damage. They wouldn’t step up one at a time to get knocked down like Bruce Lee villains. All they needed to do was make enough holes in him before he could do likewise. Thugs weren’t gonna attack in single file and fall politely to the side so he could scoop Andy into his arms.

Not that he actually intended to scoop anything.
Fuck you, Kevin Costner.

Maybe he could toss a chair into the street and someone would come up to investigate. He glanced over the edge and saw the pool below. No chance he’d be able to throw anything far enough to reach Park Avenue. With his luck, he’d only kill some kid walking their dog and be gunned down before he could get himself arrested.

A bright trapezoid fell onto the terrace from the dining room windows.

Inside, the big table had been pushed to one side and Andy sat sagging in a dining chair, strapped to it and blindfolded with black duct tape. Two men faced the chair talking calmly. They were Anglo and thirtyish, not particularly big or scary looking. The skinny one had a walrus ’stache, and the stockier one leaned against the sideboard saying something muted by the triple-paned windows.
Chunk and Walrus rob a zillionaire.

If Ruben crossed the terrace to flank them from the south, they’d see him in the glare from the lights. For all he knew, there were more upstairs headed his way with box cutters and a duffel bag. He started to tremble in the hot night air.
I know him.

Walrus was the guy who’d swiped Andy’s wallet on the day they’d met.

Who were these people? Not muggers. Not spies. For some reason, Ruben had expected the goons to be identifiable by their costumes: ugly gangbangers or mobsters in sharkskin suits or creepy Eurotrash with eye patches and a hairless cat. More Hollywood bullshit.

Chunk blinked at Andy as if waiting, then turned to snarl something at Walrus.

Andy struggled to shake his head, and his swollen lips moved. Walrus backhanded him, and bloody drool ran from Andy’s chin.

The silent impact opened a searing hole inside Ruben, so hot and sharp that he thought at first he’d been shot. Andy could die in there while he stood out here in his shorts holding his dick. This job wasn’t a game, but he’d been beaten anyways.

Even deaf outside, Ruben saw immediately what they were trying to do. They needed info, and Andy was stalling for time, but that would only work till they got impatient. If they could get him downstairs and into a trunk before the cops arrived, they’d exit through the garage, and Andy would disappear for good.

Chunk tipped Andy’s chair back and dragged it a few inches, saying something unpleasant. Gory saliva ran out of Andy’s nostril, off his chin, but he didn’t whimper or respond. He looked brave. He looked handsome and terrified.

Keeping to the shadows, Ruben slipped back to the north door and entered the apartment in slow motion, hyperconscious of his bare feet and boxers, taking no chances.

Inside the library, Ruben flipped the panel to reveal a keypad and a screen that read MOTION DETECTED.

No shit, Sherlock.

All these systems featured some kind of silent panic switch that alerted the cops. Andy had shown him how to arm and disarm the system plenty of times, but beyond the basics he had no clue. Again Ruben cursed his laziness and complacency. He pawed the panel’s buttons. A lot of fancy bullshit he didn’t have time to figure out while seconds slid down the drain.

Andy muttered and grunted in the other room. A couple thudding hits and then something shattered.
No time.

What had Andy said? “You know plenty.”

Hardwired alarms tripped if the wires were cut, right? Without questioning the impulse, Ruben clawed the control panel off the wall with one tight hand, ripping it from the sheetrock so that it dangled on thin wires.
C’mon, NYPD.

Instantly, all of the lights came on and a high
zeet-zeet-zeet
siren filled the apartment. The digital window shades began to strobe, clear-opaque-clear-opaque.

Time to move!

The dining room got quiet. Footsteps headed in his direction. He yanked a couple more wires loose for good measure and pressed his bare skin against the wall so they’d pass him without seeing him there. He had to get out to Andy.

Ruben tucked himself into the little tree alcove off the kitchen, careful not to disturb the leaves.

At the last second, the lanky thug turned and saw him and opened his mouth, showing crooked teeth.

Before he could make a sound, Ruben swung and his right fist connected hard; his left followed with an uppercut that lifted the guy off his feet. He crumpled like a deboned trout.

Ruben crouched. His knuckles throbbed and oozed blood but somehow didn’t hurt.
Adrenaline.
He tried to calm his heart, tactical breathing:
four in, hold four, four out.

A scraping sound from the living room, something heavy hauled across the floor.

He needed a weapon. Anything. A knife seemed silly, but maybe a club. He saw the red tube of a fire extinguisher and reached for it without thinking.

On the floor Walrus grunted and squirmed, but there was no time to waste. Ruben made tracks toward the living room and Andy. All that mattered was Andy being okay.

Ruben gripped the fire extinguisher in his sweaty left hand and crept forward in a rush, moving so fast along the hall he almost ran into the other asshole.

Chunk was dragging Andy strapped to the chair toward that service elevator. Andy sat still, his head lolling, and the goon was walking backward and cursing under his breath, so he didn’t see Ruben’s angry approach and had no chance to react till the last instant.