AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Parker shut the door. And then he said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He studied them. “I guess I should say you’re looking good.”
“But I actually look like shit?” North said with a grin.
Parker shrugged.
“A few rough nights. You look fantastic.”
“I know,” Parker said.
Shaw coughed. Loudly.
“This is Shaw,” North said. “Shaw, this is Parker Rhodes.”
If the name had ever meant something to Shaw, he’d forgotten it. And anyway, the immediate problems were too pressing for him to comb through his memory—the immediate problems being that Parker looked like he wanted to eat North alive, and North looked like he was eighteen again, sticking his chest out like a fucking rooster, that Chouteau-boy-devouring smirk cocked at the corner of his mouth.
Shaw coughed again.
“Oh,” North said. “Right. Shaw’s my partner.”
Parker made a dismissive noise and looked back at North. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but why are you here? I mean—is this one of those candid camera shows? What in the world is going on?”
“Why are you here?” Shaw asked.
“I work here. I’m Mr. Brey’s aide. Wait, I remember you. You’re the one who got stabbed.”
Heat rippled through Shaw’s body, and he opened his mouth to reply, but North said hurriedly, “Park, there is something seriously wrong here. I don’t know what it is, but we’re looking into a double murder, and I think your boss is tied up in it somehow.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Park said. “Eric wouldn’t kill anyone.”
North took a deep breath and glanced at Shaw. Shaw shrugged.
“What do you mean?” Park asked. “You’re serious? But he wouldn’t…” Park didn’t finish the sentence, though, and a strange look crossed his face.
“What?” North asked. “What is it?”
“I mean—ok, it’s not like this was my dream, right, to be closing in on thirty and doing what’s basically an intern’s job for a guy who’s to the right of Bush, Jr. But my parents threw a lot of money at Eric, and they’re convinced I need some ‘real world experience’—” He drew the air quotes with his fingers. “—and so when they asked Eric to find me a spot, he couldn’t exactly say no. So, here I am. For the time being, I guess. Anyway, that’s a long way to tell you when I got here, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I talked shit with the girls, you know, normal girl stuff.”
“That sounds sexist,” Shaw said. “And maybe like internalized homophobia.”
Parker looked at him like some new bug had crawled out from under the desk. “It’s a joke, it’s just a way of talking—”
“And what?” North said. “Did someone say something?”
“This girl was here; she’s gone now, Lindsey something. She said she hooked up with Eric once. And she said it got…weird. Like, bondage, that kind of thing.”
“That’s called kink-shaming.” Shaw laughed, but the sound felt hollow in his chest. “Boy, you really shouldn’t kink-shame.”
“Weird how?” North asked. “Because of the BDSM stuff?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so; she seemed…scared. And then she was gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? Dead?”
“God, no. She quit. She didn’t come back.” Parker smoothed his trousers over his hips. “But then you said murder, and my first thought was, Oh God, he killed some hookers. That happens, you know. These conservative guys, all that stuff builds up in their system, they’re all repressed, and one day they blow.”
“They’re called sex workers,” Shaw said. “Hookers is an offensive term. Jeez, you’re not North’s type at all.”
North blinked like that one had caught him upside the head. Parker’s expression shifted to confused and then, a moment later, to a kind of amused bewilderment.
