Page 1

Riordan

Just a few days before Christmas and what was I doing? Was I getting together with family that I hardly ever saw during the year to stuff my face with way too much rich food? Was I putting up decorations only to take them back down again a few days later? Or maybe joining the teeming crowds at an overpriced mall, shopping for expensive Christmas presents for people I didn’t even like all that much?

None of the above—although, come to think of it, none of that sounded like anything I wanted to do anyway.

Instead, I was sitting here in what was actually one of my favorite kinds of places—a seedy, dimly lit gay bar that smelled of sex, spilled whiskey, men’s cheap cologne and maybe a little desperation. I was a thousand miles from home, waiting for the right opportunity to approach the gorgeous little fugitive I’d been tracking for the past few days and maybe figuring out a way to get him into bed before we started the long trek back to Atlanta. Maybe this was shaping up to be a pretty good Christmas after all.

When I first left the Army, I’d had trouble finding a job, because former Rangers tended to sometimes make bad employees. We’re too damn independent and don’t take direction well, or at least not in a civilian situation. That’s what my first two bosses had claimed, anyway, as they were firing me.

After a few months of trying to work for other people, with at best mixed success, I decided to start my own business and became a Bail Enforcement Agent, working with a couple of bondsmen in town. That, of course, is a fancy way of saying I became a bounty hunter. Though while “bail enforcement agent” looked better on forms when you were trying for a small business loan at the bank, it just didn’t sound nearly as badass.

I fucking loved the job, and I was damn good at it, so I didn’t want to give it up, even though it turned out that running my own business wasn’t something I actually excelled at. I hated doing paperwork, and dealing with bondsmen meant you had to stay on top of them to get your money in a timely manner. And that was another thing I couldn’t seem to be bothered with. I soon learned that running my own business meant I didn’t have the luxury of taking only the jobs that interested me, which made it a lot less fun.

When I’d first gotten out of the Army, I’d had a little trouble finding a job I wanted right away. I’d been living in North Carolina then, and for a while I was beginning to think I’d made a big mistake in leaving the service at all. Then one day I reconnected with an old friend at a bar I used to frequent. He was in town visiting old friends. Lucas Hayes was an ex-Army buddy, who had left the Rangers a year before I had, to go to work for his father-in-law, who had opened up his own private detective agency. He invited me to come see him in Atlanta where he now lived and meet his father-in-law, who was an impressive guy and who might have a job for me.

His name was Ed Colton, and though I called the business he ran a detective agency, in reality, it was more than that. I think he did some work for the government that was above my pay grade, and that was fine with me. The less I knew the better, as far as I was concerned. Plausible deniability and all that.

Ed was ex-FBI or ATF or some other alphabet agency—he was pretty cagey and secretive about which one, and there was definitely a story there that I wasn’t privy to. Probably because it was none of my business, and as I said, that was all right with me. He seemed like a good enough guy, and best of all he paid well.

When he found out I was recently out of the Army and looking for work, he’d asked me to step into his office and have a chat. Lucas came in too, and while I was there, Mr. Colton asked me about my service record. When he found out I had some commendations from my time in Afghanistan, along with a wound that had taken out my knee and caused me to take an early retirement, he had offered me a job. I had an artificial knee now, and I was still working at the agency, going on three years now, doing whatever they needed me to do.

So far, my job had consisted mostly of looking for people. All kinds of them. Runaways and missing persons, for sure, but also those who had skipped out on their bail or who had stopped paying their court-ordered child support. I was a lot like a bounty hunter in that regard. In Georgia, I didn’t even need a license to hunt them. I just took a state course, and my agency paid the fees. The officers who worked for the state called themselves Bail Recovery Agents in Georgia, but I kind of liked the more old-fashioned term of bounty hunter—or what my boss called me, which was an “Acquisitions Specialist.”

I really enjoyed tracking down deadbeat dads who weren’t paying any child support and encouraging them to make a better effort. I was given quite a bit of leeway, and maybe that’s what I loved the most. State laws varied with regard to the rights of bounty hunters, but as a general rule, we had greater authority to arrest someone than even the local police. A fugitive could be taken into custody and removed to any state without extradition, and all I needed was a copy of Jazz Devlin’s guardianship papers, which was in my suitcase, along with some airline tickets. Armed with that paperwork, I didn’t need a warrant and could enter private property unannounced if I had reasonable suspicion. I didn’t even have to read him his rights when I took him in because at that point, he didn’t have any. All I needed was that handy reasonable suspicion that the fugitive was on the premises, and I could waltz right in. It was what enabled regular law enforcement to go anywhere they pleased in search of a suspect.

As a bounty hunter, I had the same rights. Even better because I didn’t have to have a warrant like the police did. I was also authorized to use deadly force, if I needed to. I gave my bail jumpers a choice. I told them I could bring them in warm or I could bring them in cold. It was totally up to them. So far, most of them had made the right choice.

I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico so close to Christmas due to an unfortunate incident involving a drunken poker game and a recent bad run of luck. My personal bank account was currently a little lower than I liked it to be, so I had agreed to take this assignment when my boss offered it to me, as it involved a nice little bonus for working over the holidays.

I glanced over at the kid again, Kitt Devlin, again to make sure he hadn’t moved from his chair and that he was still quietly, steadily getting drunk, though it was hard to see how those fruity little drinks he was putting away could do much more than give him a headache in the morning.

This bar was the kind of place that did much better with the lowest lighting possible, and the murky, low-lying smoke hanging in the air helped too. I’d been in a lot of places like this over the years, and it was beginning to get just a little old. Or hell, maybe I was.

It occurred to me that I should consider settling down. Find myself someone cute and cozy to come home to and stay closer to my base in Atlanta.

It wasn’t all that late, maybe around nine o’clock, but the place was nearly empty. I guess it was a slow night. A few customers were scattered around the room at various tables and booths, but nobody was on the tiny scrap of a dance floor. Hell, I was shocked there even was a dance floor, but I guess this place had once seen better days. The majority of people in the room were sitting at the large, semi-circular bar.

An old and catchy Dolly Parton tune, “Hard Candy Christmas,” was playing softly in the background, with Dolly singing about how she was, “barely getting through tomorrow, but still I won't let sorrow bring me way down.”

I felt that in my soul.

Kitt Devlin, the one I was here in Albuquerque to pick up, must have been feeling it too, as he was tapping his fingers on the side of his glass, keeping time, and he had a thoughtful look on his pretty face. One thing I could definitely say about the little punk—he was probably the best-looking thing I’d seen in…hell, maybe ever. Tall, but not too tall; lean but not too lean; dark hair that fell perfectly across his broad, unblemished forehead. I felt like one of the bears in the Goldilocks story assessing him, because to me, he looked just right.

He had the look of a wealthy, spoiled brat too. A haughty nose—the better to look down on people with—and dark slashes of eyebrows, one of which was currently quirked up on the side, showing his nearly complete contempt for this place. Nevertheless, here he was, and considering the early hour and the fact that he didn’t look over legal drinking age in this state, it was a bit surprising that he’d managed to get served at all and able to get drunk so quickly. It probably spoke to both his ingenuity and his strong determination. I knew he had a fake ID—I’d seen him flash it—but he really didn’t look twenty-one, so the bartender must be letting it slide.

He sure wasn’t doing it on his charm alone, as he looked and acted sullen, jaded and extremely bored. Not to mention moody, like the bad-tempered teenager he wasn’t all that far from being. Boredom was a big problem for Kitt, according to his file, because when he got bored, that was when trouble seemed to blow up around him.

I was a little surprised at the strong reaction I was having to him. From the first moment I laid eyes on Kitt two days ago in person, I’d felt an instant attraction that I’d been fighting hard ever since. I mentally chastised myself, because I should have been concentrating only on the job at hand—which was keeping him in one piece and getting him back home to Atlanta.

My eyes fell to his wrists when he lit the cigarette, and I noticed not only how slim and somehow fragile they were, but also the little red and green beaded bracelets he was wearing on both wrists—a lot of them. Friendship bracelets, the Swifties called them. According to his file, he was only ten years younger than I was, but he seemed like such a kid.

Kitt had a history of being a loose cannon. It hadn’t been long since he was kicked out of his college, and since then, he had been picked up by the police on three, separate occasions. Two of them were drunk and disorderly charges along with one resisting arrest charge. Since I’d been following him, he seemed to be almost always short of cash and was sleeping wherever he could find an empty couch to crash on. He drank too much, smoked too much, and ran that smart, little mouth of his way more than was good for him. He was also far too inquisitive—he liked to stick that patrician little nose of his in other people’s business, which was probably part of what had landed him in the trouble he was in now.

From the information I had about him, he had witnessed a shooting in Atlanta, after being out clubbing half the night. The participants were members of the Everybody Killa gang, a hybrid criminal street gang based in the area that had ties to a major national gang called the Bloods. They had long been engaged in a violent feud with Red Tape Gang, another hybrid criminal street gang based in the city. For years, the rivalry between EBK and the RTG had resulted in several shootings and homicides. On the night in question, at around three in the morning, a man named Jamal Ferguson and four of his friends left a nightclub in a section of Atlanta called Five Points. As Ferguson and his friends headed to their vehicle, a second vehicle came down the street, stopping immediately next to Ferguson’s car. A few seconds later, without provocation, multiple occupants of that vehicle opened fire on Ferguson and his friends. Ferguson and his friends returned fire, and both Ferguson and another man with him had died at the scene as a result of the injuries they sustained in the gunbattle.

A person in a third vehicle parked in alongside Ferguson’s car had witnessed the entire thing. And guess who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Kitt Devlin wasn’t involved in any way, but he fled the scene. He did, however, stay around long enough for the other participants to see him. He called 911 from another location but refused to tick around and talk to the police. When detectives recovered the footage of the shooting from the incident, however, they identified the third vehicle by its license plate and requested Kitt’s cooperation in testifying to what he witnessed. Kitt refused and when they insisted…he refused again. A warrant was issued for him to be taken into involuntary protective custody until a trial could be scheduled.

And then Kitt Devlin ran. It was such a juvenile, stupid thing to do, it was almost breathtaking.

Just then, Kitt got up unexpectedly and sauntered over to the old-fashioned looking jukebox in the corner. It was actually a new machine, just made to look retro. I hadn’t seen a jukebox, new or old, in years, but it fit in with the country western vibe of this place. He leaned over it, studying the selections, I guess. He was wearing a denim jacket and sinfully tight jeans, ripped across the thighs. I sat back and admired the way he looked, and I wasn’t the only one. He was lithe and slim and sexy, and though I considered myself to be mostly bi, there were times when only someone like Kitt would do. Not that I could do anything about it, except admire the way he looked. Not ethically, anyway—but I’d done a lot worse for a lot less.

I justified my interest to myself by thinking it was okay to look at him, as long as that’s all I did. I needed a bit of kink to really get me going anyway. Not whips and chains or anything so dramatic. That was rare and it took the right kind of guy—someone who actually got off on that. But spanking some cute little ass or dominating my partner a little if he enjoyed it and needed it—I could get into that. Unfortunately for me, Kitt seemed to fit that bill nicely. He was definitely a bottom and almost certainly a brat, if I were any judge.

I got up and walked over next to him before somebody else did, leaning against the jukebox and showing off his assets like he was.

“You look a little young to be in this bar.”

He glanced over at me and started to say something smartass and sarcastic—I could see it trembling on his pretty mouth—but then his eyes widened as he got a good look at me, and he let his gaze run up and down my body.

“What’s it to ya?” he asked, but he let a little smile play around his lips and even batted his lush eyelashes a little to show me he wasn’t mad about it.

“Well, I was just wondering if you knew what kind of place this is. Let me clue you in, just in case you wandered in off the street and didn’t know. This is a gay bar, though it’s not getting a lot of action in that regard tonight. Normally, guys come to a place like this to meet up with and fuck other guys.”

“Oh yes, I’m well aware.” He toasted me with his glass. “I didn’t just come in here for the drinks.”

I nodded and plucked the glass out of his hand, putting it on top of the jukebox as an old Conway Twitty song, “Hello, Darlin,’” came on.

“Prove it. Dance with me.”

Kitt’s eyes widened, and he looked around the place—no one else was dancing.

“Are you kidding? No one else is doing that. We might look stupid.”

“So what? Do you only do what other people are doing?”

He gave me a reckless grin, and his eyes lit up. “No, I don’t, now that you mention it. Okay, then. Let’s do it.”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me out on the tiny dance floor, but then he didn’t seem to know what to do once he got there. He held out a hand to me like he expected to lead, but I grinned again, grabbed his hand and tucked it behind his waist, while I pulled him so close he had to tip his head back to look up at me. He had no choice but to awkwardly put his free hand on my shoulder.

I began to move him around the tiny dance floor to the sad old song Conway was warbling, holding Kitt tight against me and enjoying myself probably way too much. I could feel the sweet lines of his body all up and down my own. His breath was warm against my throat, and though at first, he wasn’t doing much more than swaying a little to the music, I added a few fancier steps, and he tried his best to follow me. He looked down at his feet, though, so to keep him from it and keep him off-center, I whirled him around a few times until he was breathless and dizzy and holding onto me for dear life.

I hadn’t shaved since early that morning, so my beard scratched along his smooth cheek as I held him close and bent even closer to him. He looked up at me with a slightly confused expression, and I knew he was beginning to wonder if he’d gotten in over his head. His sweet submissive nature was coming out a little as we danced, and I was feeling it a little too much myself, actually, so I put a little distance between us, by twirling him out away from me and then reeling him back in. He drew in a sharp breath and threw his arms around my neck as I dipped him way down toward the floor. The music stopped, and he pushed at my chest to get me to let go of him. I set him back on his feet and pretended not to notice how unsteady he was.

“Thanks,” he said, looking a little pale. “But I think I’m probably done. Too much to drink, I guess. I’m going to sit down for a little while.” He stood there awkwardly a moment before giving me a slight smile. “Is that okay?”

There was that submissive nature showing itself again.

“Of course. Thanks for the dance, sweetheart.”

He blushed, as he grabbed his drink again and scooted quickly back over to his table.

I took a seat at a table nearby after a minute or two, not looking at him, because I could feel his gaze on me. I think he sensed something, and I made him nervous. I didn’t want him to get so nervous that he thought I was stalking him, so I pretended to ignore him.

He picked up his glass and threw back the contents remaining in it with a snap of his head. His hair shone as black as midnight in the light and his face was really gorgeous.

Not two minutes later, some guy came over and asked him to dance. Kitt laughed at something he said, and I noticed how infectious his laugh was. The guy who asked him was a tall drink of water, wearing jeans and a damn cowboy hat and boots. Then again, this was New Mexico. Kitt got up to go with him to the dance floor, and I felt a jolt of possessive jealousy.

The “cowboy” he was dancing with was showing him some kind of complicated line dance shit. Kitt hooked his thumbs in his belt loops like the guy showed him and started trying to follow what he did. It was cute as hell, and I thought again that he was way too young for me. I also noticed that he had begun to stumble a little, and I knew he was drunk on his ass. I still wanted him with a fierceness that shocked me.

He took off his damn shirt then and tied it around his waist, showing off a luscious, tanned body that looked strong and a little muscular, like he worked out a little. The cowboy gave him a sip of his beer that spilled and ran down the strong column of his throat onto his chest. The cowboy laughed and leaned over to lick it and that did it for me. I got up and went over there, grabbing his arm.

“I think this is my dance,” I told Kitt, and he looked up at me in confusion.

“Oh, hi. Did you want to join us? It’s a line dance, so you can if you like.”

I smiled at him, and the cowboy said, “Get your own, mister.”

I turned my back to Kitt and gave the cowboy a look that quickly changed his mind about arguing, and he took off back to the bar.

“He left,” Kitt said. “Why did he do that?”

“No idea,” I said. “Why don’t you just dance with me? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay,” he said, and I took him in my arms and began to whirl him around so fast he had to throw his arms around my neck to hold on. He gazed up at me with those big, dark-fringed eyes and his lush mouth fell open in surprise.

Somebody started playing “Little Bitty” by Alan Jackson on the juke box, and I pulled him into a fast two-step. He couldn’t keep up, so I lifted him off his feet and swept him around the floor. I may have made him a little dizzy, accidentally-on-purpose as I twirled him around so that he’d cling to me even harder. Finally, the music stopped, and he stayed in my arms, still holding on tightly and blowing his sweet breath in my face. He gasped out the words, “Dizzy,” and I pushed his head down on my shoulder and held him close.

I walked him back over to the bar and sat him down on a stool next to mine so he could rest a few minutes before I took him up to my room. I thought he was about ready to retire for the night, whether he knew it or not.

He pulled a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and inclined his head slightly to the side to light it up, twisting his head to avoid getting smoke in his eyes. Damn it, even that move was sexy as fuck, like every other move I’d seen him make. But I got the feeling he wasn’t even aware of how good he looked.

One of the ones leaning over the bar at the far end was a salesman—at least he looked like one. Big and beefy, with a red face, he wore a rumpled suit and was going on and on, telling the bartender stories with a Christmas theme. The one he was currently in the middle of was about how much he used to love Christmas as a kid and how much better everything used to be back then. He was pretty obviously drunk and getting louder. Most of the other customers were trying to ignore him, except for one. I saw that Kitt had begun to pay close attention and had his head slightly tilted toward the guy, his eyes narrowed and his lip curling as he listened. I wondered what was going on in that pretty little head of his.

“Christmas morning used to be the best at my house,” the salesman was saying. “My brother and I would get up before everyone else and run downstairs to see if Santa Claus had come. To see what he’d brought us.” He chuckled. “We were too damn old for it by then, but we were afraid that if we told our mom that we knew there was no such thing as Santa Claus, we might stop getting presents. So, we’d run to the tree and make a lot of noise until we woke her and our Dad up and they’d come down, all ready to raise hell with us, but then they’d realize what day it was and plop down on the couch to watch us. Mom would go off to the kitchen to get Dad his coffee and make us her special Christmas pancakes. Dad would watch us open our presents and after breakfast, he’d be on the floor beside us, putting our toys together and saying that Santa must have forgot to do it the night before.”

“Oh yeah?” the bartender replied. “What kind of toys?”

“Trains and little toy cars that fit onto a track—you know the kind. Just cheap stuff that mostly tore up after a day or two—we were a little rough on them, but that was part of the fun. Christmas was the best back then, man. Not all commercial and expensive like it is today.”

The bartender, who must have been bored—though probably not as much as I was—kept talking to him. Maybe he knew the guy or else he was angling for a good tip.

“What about your pancake breakfast? What was so special about that?”

The guy laughed. “Not a damn thing. My mom was a terrible cook, but she’d stick some frozen pancakes in the toaster and then use whipped cream to make faces on them after she took them out of the toaster to make us laugh. I still remember how bad those damn things tasted. But man, I’d love to go back to that time again, just for that one morning alone.”

Kitt shook his head. I focused on Kitt as he signaled the bartender for another one of the fancy cocktails he’d been drinking. He’d had enough, but I let him do it, hoping he’d just pass out and not cause me any trouble about going along with me to my room. Whatever he’d ordered had another little umbrella in it and fruit hanging off the side. The bartender turned to look over at him and nod. That drew the salesman’s attention too.

“What do you think, boy?” the salesman asked. “Don’t you agree that Christmas is too commercialized and not what it used to be?”

Kitt turned his head a little and stared coldly at him. “Are you addressing me?” he asked in a prim, patrician little voice that was only a little slurred, but more than a little incredulous. He sounded like the queen might have sounded if someone had asked her for a light for their cigarette.

“Well, yeah. I asked if you agreed with me.”

“About what?”

“That Christmas when we were little kids was the best! Much better than today. It hasn’t been that long for you, but don’t you agree, buddy?”

Kitt smirked and tilted his glass at him. “Whatever you say...buddy.” He took a long swig of his drink.

“You don’t sound too sure,” the salesman said, his tone getting more than a little belligerent. He probably objected to that smart-ass smirk on Kitt’s face, and hell, you couldn’t blame him.

“You got a different idea?” The man yelled at him, and he must have been drunker than I’d first thought, because he’d puffed up belligerently. It looked like he was trying to start a fight over nothing much at all. And Kitt was just the kind of boy who’d give him one. I tensed, getting ready to stop this if it went much further.

I had no idea why Kitt was getting so mad about the guy’s stupid, but innocuous question. I knew that his parents had divorced when he was really young, and that he and his father had a contentious relationship. Maybe that was it. But he was about to start a fight over nothing much at all and I wasn’t in the mood tonight. As Toby Keith used to say in his song, “there was a time, back in my prime, when I could really lay it down…” But like Toby says, I ain’t as good as I once was.

“Oh, are you still talking to me?” Kitt asked the salesman, looking over at him with an incredulous look on his face.

“Yeah, damn it, I asked you a fucking question, you little asshole.”

“The thing is,” Kitt said, taking a drag off his cigarette and blowing a long plume of smoke up in the air, “I’m tired of hearing you running your big mouth. I just came in this place to have a drink. Not to listen to you. Can you lower your damn voice or at least talk about something else that doesn’t have a question for me in it? Or better yet, why don’t you just do us all a favor and shut the fuck up?”

The man lurched to his feet and began coming around the end of the bar, his face hot and bothered. I stood up, all six-feet, four inches of me, ready to head this thing off.

“The fuck did you say to me?” the drunk guy yelled.

He was going to make me get involved, damn it, and the last thing I needed was drama that would attract undue attention. I sighed and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Why don’t you sit your ass down?” I said softly, my voice low and stern as I held the salesman’s gaze. You could have heard a pin drop in that bar anyway, though, as everyone suddenly got very interested. In the background, somebody was playing Brenda Lee “rockin’ around the Christmas tree,” singing her heart out about, “everyone dancin' merrily, in the new, old-fashioned way.”

Looking a little surprised that he suddenly had a new opponent in this fight, the drunk guy glanced up at me and my disapproving face, and then he stumbled back a few steps as he got a good look at me. He fell back down on his bar stool, still looking like he wanted to fight. Now that I was closer to him, I could see how really drunk he was. He could barely sit up straight.

“Stay there and sober up, pal. As my mama used to say, don’t let anybody steal your joy. Those memories of yours sound nice. Don’t pay any attention to little assholes like this one.”

“Hey!” the little asshole yelled from beside me and started to get up. I pushed him back down again.

“Are you the bouncer?” the drunk asked.

Before I could answer, Kitt stood up beside me, trying his best to get in the middle of it again. “Maybe he is. Or maybe he’s just sick of hearing about your shitty frozen pancakes or your stupid Christmas toys, and your stupid daddy, just like everybody else.”

I turned to stare down at him. “Shut up, sit back down and let me handle this. And you don’t need any more of these,” I said, plucking the drink the bartender had just brought him out of his hand. I pushed it back across the bar. “He’s had enough. Bring him his check, please.”

“Wait—I wanted that! And I don’t need my check! I’m not ready to go yet,” Kitt said in a loud and petulant voice, trying his best to give me an intimidating look—all one hundred fifty pounds of him, soaking wet. “Who the hell are you anyway and why are you all up in my business?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Get out your wallet so you can pay the nice man. Then get back on your feet, because you’re coming with me.”

“What?” he yelled and shoved me when I wouldn’t turn to look at him.

I turned back around, looming over him and suddenly he changed his mind.

“Okay, okay, don’t get excited.” His gaze roamed me up and down again as a blush stained his cheeks and a slow, seductive smile lit his face. “If you insist. Why not?”

I plucked his wallet from his back pocket to pay his tab since he still hadn’t made any move to do it yet. He had very few bills inside, yet here he was, drinking up what little money he had left. I took his arm in a strong grip, and he didn’t resist—mainly because he’d had quite a night for himself. And it wasn’t over yet.

From beside me, the salesman slapped me on the back. “Thank you for those kind words, sir.”

“You bet,” I said and turned to take Kitt by the elbow and get him out of there.

“Hey, wait. Where are you taking me?”

“To my hotel room.”

“Oh,” he said, seeming to think it over. “Okay then. I guess that’ll work. Why didn’t you say so to start with?”

We went out into the cold night air—the temperature had dropped a lot since I’d been out there—and as I pulled him along, he leaned into me for warmth. That thin denim wasn’t doing much for him. It was only a short walk, but I let him stay as close as he seemed to want to all the way. We went in the wide glass doors leading to the lobby, which was decorated for the season with strings of white lights and a pretty, though very artificial looking, Christmas tree towering up in a corner of the room. I walked us past it on the way to the desk.

I’d arranged for a room while I’d been sitting at the bar so all I had to do was check in and get my key. Kitt stood patiently beside me, leaning slightly into me, and my arm went around his waist, like it had a mind of its own. Luckily for both of us, I came to my senses and gently eased away from him, letting him stand on his own two feet instead. Thankfully, the clerk was fast and handed over the key a few minutes later.

I’d had an idea of what I thought this boy would be like when I was first given this assignment. I’d seen his photos, of course, though they didn’t do him justice. In them, he’d looked like an actor or maybe a model, too good looking to be anything else, with a straight little nose, sad eyes and always a pout on his pretty lips.

Tonight, he also looked young and more than a little messy, like he was tired and hadn’t showered lately. I knew he was staying with whatever friend he could talk into allowing it, so he was having a hard time. His oversized denim jacket was buttoned up the wrong way. He looked bad tempered too, but that was more than likely because he was.

I wasn’t looking forward to explaining to him why I was here. Or the fact that when I left, he was coming with me. Like I said, I didn’t need to be distracted, so the idea of spending time with him over the next couple of days was not pleasant. The last thing I needed in my life was complications. He had a history of running away and of throwing temper tantrums, too, so I’d have to be vigilant and stern with him.