Wanting (11 page)

Adam walked into them, loving their enclosure.

“We’ve been through that before,” Dane said, stroking Adam’s hair. “It’s okay, it’s what I do, isn’t it? Helping you get through shit?” His voice was back to normal, with that caring tone. “You sure you’re all right this time? I mean, this is pretty big stuff, more so than the atta—”

“Yep, yep, I’m fine.” Adam nodded, his face scratched by the button on Dane’s shirt pocket. “The city shit is dealt with, and this new stuff is just something we have to get over. Can’t say I’m not waiting for Langham or Oliver to let us know whether we
really
have something to worry about, because I am, but yeah, for the most part, I’m cool.”

Dane lifted Adam’s chin with his finger, looking at him and narrowing his eyes. “You seem like you’re coping with things better.”

Was that a hint of upset there?

Adam took the plunge. “It’s you who isn’t this time.”

Dane pasted on a bright smile. “What? You think I’m unhappy? You need glasses, sunshine.” He abruptly let Adam go and turned back to the cooker, busying himself with chicken that must surely be cooked by now.

“Maybe that’s how we should work,” Adam said, hurt at the complete turnaround in Dane’s attitude again. Distant to close and back to distant within minutes.

“What do you mean?” Dane’s back stiffened.

“When one is broken the other can fix it.”

“But I’m not broken.”

“So you say, but you haven’t really been yourself since we moved here. Almost like you enjoyed being the fixer, because in the city I needed a lot of emotional work, and here I don’t.” Adam held his breath for a few seconds then let it out slowly.

Dane glanced over his shoulder, eyebrow raised. “That what you think?”

“Maybe.”

“Dinner’s ready. Can you get the plates?”

Discussion over, just like that.

Adam sighed again and did as he’d been asked, putting the plates on the table along with forks for the noodles he’d spied beneath the tureen lid. He’d hit the nail on the head, hadn’t he, and Dane would either be prickly about it or make out nothing was wrong.

It had come to him all of a sudden a few minutes ago, the realisation as to why Dane had seemed different here. Hell, they both were. Adam obviously felt better, safer, until— But Dane had been a little tetchy, abrupt with some of his responses, even before the barn. Plus, apart from in the lean-to, they hadn’t fucked once in the whole time they’d been here, the things on the bedroom shelf gathering dust.

He thought back to that one chance Dane had given him, to show he could be submissive, put his money where his mouth was. Perhaps he could now he’d gained control over his mind. He reckoned his inability to totally give in before was because he hadn’t been able to control everything else in his life. When having sex with Dane, he knew damn well he could make his lover soften the edge of his dominant streak with a well-placed swipe of his tongue or the right words whispered in his ear. Now, though? Now he’d got a handle on things, he thought he stood a pretty good chance of being subservient—all the damn way.

He glanced at Dane, who came over and placed a Pyrex dish of chicken on the table.

“Eat up,” he said as he sat, smiling at Adam, his teeth on show, as if revealing those pearls would convince Adam of Dane’s happiness.

He didn’t buy it. Teeth or not, that smile didn’t reach Dane’s eyes.

Adam sighed quietly and sat, taking the lid off the tureen and waiting for the steam to dissipate. He piled noodles on Dane’s plate—normally Dane’s ‘job’—aware their roles were reversing and not having the faintest idea of how to deal with it. He filled his own plate and began to eat, also aware of tension growing, like a tangible miasma floating between them. They hadn’t had any real altercations since they’d started going out together, so this change in dynamics frightened Adam a bit. Relationships took different paths to the original after a while, he knew that, but when it had happened last time, with another man…

He thought back to when they’d first met. He was doing that thing again, looking at things right from the beginning instead of trying to complete a puzzle with pieces missing. Hell, it had worked for the attack and the damn mini-mart thing, so why not?

Now he saw he’d been broken back then, too, reeling from a recent break-up—his first love ditching him for someone brawnier and better-looking. Adam had allowed Dane to take him under his wing, care for him, make everything okay. Dane had revelled in it, being the protector, the fixer—had done so right up until last week. Did Dane think a Dom couldn’t show weakness, was that it? Did he think he had to be with someone who was submissive in every single way in order for him to feel he was a real Dom?

It didn’t work that way, even Adam knew that with his limited knowledge of BDSM. Otherwise, why had Dane issued that sex challenge? Why had he tried to hide his frustration when Adam hadn’t been able to help himself and had wrestled for a share of that control in the bedroom? It didn’t have to be a clear Dom/sub split, did it? It wasn’t like they were deeply into the whole D/s scene anyway. As far as Adam was aware, it was a bit of fun in the bedroom, nothing too major, nothing that could make or break their relationship. Yet now he had to think again.

“How do you view our relationship?” he blurted.
Fuck. Fuck!

Dane looked up sharply. “It’s great, why?”

“I don’t mean our relationship in general, I’m happy with that, just—”

“So why ask?” Dane couldn’t quite hold off his frown. “If you’re happy, you wouldn’t feel the need to ask.”

Adam held his fork mid-air, shocked for a moment at Dane’s tone. It had been harsh, abrading Adam’s nerve ends, making him feel insecure and indignant all at once. “I just wondered where you saw us going, that’s all. The Dom/sub thing, I mean.” He rushed on. “I think I’ll be able to do what you want now, do as I’m told and whatnot.”

“Yeah?” Dane brightened, his expression changing from scowling monster to happy camper. “You want to try it when we’ve finished dinner?”

“Could do,” Adam said, wondering why knowing that he was right, that Dane wanted total control in everything, made him feel so uncomfortable.

Oliver leaned his head back against the passenger seat as Langham drove away from Mr and Mrs Drum’s for the second time. They’d been to deliver the awful news—well, Langham had delivered it—and left a crumpled couple to try to come to terms with the fact their son was dead and no, they really didn’t need to view the body if they didn’t want to, but if they did it might be best to wait a day or two.

Wait for Hank to make Jason pretty again.

“That was…horrible,” Oliver said. “I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“Be thankful you don’t have to. I, on the other hand, have it on my list of regular to-dos.”

“Every job has its shit points.” Oliver massaged the bridge of his nose, hoping the headache that taunted from the back of his skull would fuck off before it had the balls to shift to the front.

“And we’ve got a shitty point ahead of us now.” Langham veered out of the housing estate and headed towards the city’s innards.

“Hank?”

“Yeah, Hank, but you can wait outside in the corridor, if you’d rather.”

Did Oliver rather? He wasn’t sure. The morgue hadn’t been his favourite place last time, but as with the Sugar Strands case, this one had got to him. It had something to do with him being in the thick of it again, seeing the case unfold, the officers working around the clock to get some kind of lead, and he wasn’t sure he should be enjoying, if that was the right word, the change from mere informant to being Langham’s ‘associate’.

He thought about his editor boss’s voice earlier, filled with glee that Oliver wouldn’t be coming in to work because he had to assist the police. The barrage of questions—“Do you have anything you can give me yet? You got some information for me before we go to press?”—made Oliver feel ill. Oh, he knew that was the way of the world, that humans had the urge to know every gory detail, but the fact his boss did this for a living and revelled in all the juicy titbits he could get his hands on wasn’t quite right in Oliver’s opinion. Would he rather be making endless cups of tea for the journalists or sitting beside Langham now, on their way to see a jolly man who cut open corpses in order to find out how they’d died?

The latter, definitely, although not the going to see Hank part, not seeing Jason Drum laid out on a metal slab, the top of his head cut off as Hank weighed his brain. Oliver wanted to help solve the case, that was all, to give the dead justice so they could move on.

Jason hadn’t spoken to him since they’d been to see him at the barn. If it was some kind of ritual killing then the way Jason had been murdered was an escalation. Thomas hadn’t been harmed—discounting strangulation by a thick chain, of course—and there had been no whipping marks on his body, no signs he’d been mistreated prior to his death. But with Adam’s and Dane’s witness statements and the proof on Jason that he had been whipped until he’d bled, they knew that whoever had done this had upped the ante, so to speak.

What the fuck would these men do next? And when? How long would they leave it between Jason’s murder and the next? Would Adam hear voices from a future victim, and would Oliver be given another info dump—before the person was actually killed this time?

If only that would happen.

Langham pulled up to the morgue’s back doors, and the jarring, throaty squeak of the handbrake being lifted pulled Oliver out of his thoughts.

He made a snap decision. He’d go inside the examination room, not wait in the corridor, but
only
in case Jason wanted to speak to him again.

* * * *

Jason had remained silent, a bloody mess of peeled-back torso and whip slashes. Hank had confirmed the cause of death—another chain strangulation—and, as with Thomas, Jason hadn’t been sexually violated, his rear end showing no signs of trauma. However, they knew he’d had a cock in his mouth—it sounded so crass, didn’t it, thinking like that?—because of the witness statements, but it was some comfort to know the men hadn’t been raped.

Oliver sat in Langham’s car again now, on their way to a house that would hopefully give them the results Langham hoped for. The Transit van had been found, an everyday white bugger with a dented left side and a wonky rear number plate. It sat outside a Mr Littleworth’s house, him being the owner, although it had recently been stolen then returned if Mr Littleworth was to be believed. Oliver wondered why the man hadn’t reported it as stolen and asked Langham what he thought.

“He didn’t even know at first it had been taken, apparently.” Langham cursed as a driver in a green Ford cut him up.

“So what made him realise?”

“The dent in the side. Said—damn these bloody red lights!—it’d been in pristine condition when he got out of it after work Saturday evening.” Langham jerked to a halt and stared mutinously at the line of stopped cars ahead. “I swear to fucking God the fates are against us whenever we start getting leads.”

Oliver nodded absently, eyeing the lucky sods opposite who cruised across the road in front of them, their traffic lights gloriously green. “So it was taken, used to transport Jason then returned when?”

“I can only assume the same night, because Adam said that when they’d been at the barn that night there were only cars parked out the back.”

“They must have switched vehicles, used Mr Littleworth’s van on purpose. They know what they’re doing, the fucking bastards.”

Their light turned green, and Langham released the handbrake, moving forward slowly then with greater speed as the traffic got moving. “Yep. Took Jason out of the city to where the CCTV stopped, then transferred him to a car—all of them outside the barn were Fords, Renaults or Volkswagens according to Dane. He couldn’t make out definite colours, just that they were dark. Adam, even though he used a torch, couldn’t remember either. Bit of a shit, that, but we can’t force them to recall all the details however much it would help us. Whoever was driving the van must have continued on through Lower Repton and re-entered the city from that end. Took the van back into a street that has no CCTV, and left it there as though it had never been gone in the first place.”

“Apart from the dent.”

Langham nodded. “Apart from the dent. Ah, here we are. Wedgewood Road, and number seventy-five is right about…here.”

Langham parked then they both got out. Langham immediately went to the van, fixed in place by a couple of closely parked cars, to give it a once-over. He flashed his pocket torch over the side. The dent was pretty big and deep, as though another large van or similar had smacked into it. Hopefully, they’d get some paint transfer, something to go on so they could locate the driver of the mystery vehicle and find out where the accident had taken place, whether a glimpse of the person driving Mr Littleworth’s van had been spotted.

Langham strolled up the path leading to Mr Littleworth’s house, a semi-detached that spoke of a hefty mortgage or that Mr Littleworth, if he’d paid the bank off, was a wealthy man. Oliver steeled himself to meet someone like Cordelia Shields, a woman they’d encountered in the Sugar Strands case, all posh toff with a clipped accent and an air of superiority. When the door swung open after Langham had pulled the bell cord, Oliver’s expectation was completely dashed. If it was Mr Littleworth standing before them, he was a working man who had grafted hard to get this kind of home, his roots remaining embedded. He wore a white vest over a protruding belly. A pair of grey tracksuit bottoms covered his legs, and his white-sock-encased feet poked out, a hole in each toe. Oliver shifted his gaze upwards. The man had a day or more’s worth of stubble, dallying on becoming a beard, and dark semi-circles as plump as orange segments hung beneath his eyes.

Yep, he worked hard all right.

“Detective Langham and Banks,” Langham said, revealing his badge. “Mind if we look at the van before we take your statement?”

“Oh, hello. That was quick. Yep, hang on a sec while I put me slippers on.” He moved to walk away then turned back. “Want to come in a minute?”