Page 1 of Bait and Switch (Subtle Deceptions #2)

ONE

Gabriel

Monday before noon, late November.

“Seriously? You have got to be kidding me.”

With a grunt, followed by an extra-long and extra-deep sigh, Gabe nudged the body in front of him with the toe of his hiking boot.

Maybe he was wrong, maybe Peter was taking a power nap.

He stared down and willed Peter to move, to sit up with a “Gotcha!” and a snap of his fingers.

Maybe he’d even give himself away by laughing at Gabe’s reaction.

But he did none of those things. His ex stayed on his back, his arms all akimbo, angled awkwardly by his sides. His left hand was tucked underneath his back, the right almost touching his hip. There was no blood, no other signs of violence, just an obviously broken neck.

It was near freezing today and the filthy, bird poop-covered deck of the Shangri-La , the only boat at the marina in worse shape than The Golden Ticket, was no place to take a breather. With his neck at an impossible angle—and in that getup—he was definitely not taking a catnap.

Wavelets rolled up and slapped against the side of the sailboat, emphasizing Gabe’s morbid thoughts. He didn’t laugh, but Peter had officially been caught dead in a hideous outfit.

He was deflecting. Even Gabe, notorious for avoiding the serious, could recognize a good deflection when it hit him in the face. In his defense, it was a hideous tracksuit, one Gabe had never seen Peter in—when he was alive anyway.

“Fuck.”

He and Peter may have been past tense, but he’d never wished him bodily harm. A parking ticket? An audit notice from the IRS? Maybe, but never this.

Never dead.

“A baby blue tracksuit, like some sort of common Jersey gangster?” He paused and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you been binge-watching The Sopranos again? Tony is not the role model you think he is,” Gabe said to the dead man.

There was no response from the corpse, for which he was eternally grateful.

But, just in case he was wrong about the my-ex-is-dead part of the day, Gabe crouched next to Peter’s remains and tentatively reached out his hand, pressing his index and middle fingers against Peter’s neck.

Nothing. He wasn’t even warm to the touch.

How long had he been at the marina and on the Shangri-La ?

How long had he been lying there dead?

Out of the corner of one eye, Gabe spotted the errant tennis ball that had ultimately been responsible for the unpleasant discovery.

Slowly, it began to move, the slight wind sending it rolling off the sailboat’s deck and onto the pier, where it bounced once and then dropped into the bay with a gentle bloop.

Ranger Man’s dog, Bowie, trotted to the edge of the dock and peered over the side, his tail slowly wagging back and forth.

Even Gabe, who’d never owned a dog in his life, knew Bowie was considering a quick swim to retrieve his toy.

“Don’t you even fucking think about it,” Gabe said to the dog. “I do not have the bandwidth for this— this-ness .” He waved a hand in the corpse’s direction. “You jumping into the bay is the cherry on top that I don’t need. You and I both know your owner would pin the blame for your wet ass on me.”

Bowie side-eyed him, huffed, and plopped down on the dock to rest his head on his paws. Totally waiting for Gabe to turn his back again.

Gabe rose to his feet to stare out over the slate gray waters of Riddle Bay.

Maybe a perfectly reasonable explanation for this would erupt from the surface of the water like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with a comic bubble declaring SOLUTION floating in the air above it.

Maybe the monster would return Bowie’s ball too.

Where was Swamp Thing when he needed him?

He could exchange the ball for the body; it seemed like a reasonable trade.

Peter’s death was going to be trouble. No offense to his dead ex-boyfriend, but Gabe did not need the drama a corpse was going to bring him. He could feel a tension headache starting to form behind his eyes.

Surely it wasn’t grief. Surely he had no tears for him.

Since a week ago Sunday, when Casey Lundin had informed Gabe that someone had been by the marina asking about him, Gabe had been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

From Lundin’s description, he had known the person who’d done the asking could only be Gabe’s ex, Peter Vale.

A long seven-plus days of worrying had followed, but Peter himself had never returned—until today.

The shoe had dropped. Painfully.

Had Peter come to warn him that the Colavitos were planning to measure him up for special-edition cement loafers? That seemed fanciful. Peter was more likely to throw Gabe to the wolves than to save him from them.

No, what he was feeling wasn’t grief so much as disgust and anger. Who would do this?

Gabe had spent the last week pondering Peter-related questions and not coming up with any answers: Were Larry Colavito and his nephews planning to ambush him in the dark of night? Why had Peter ventured to Heartstone Island? How the fuck had he found Gabe anyway? And when was he coming back?

The answer to that last question was lying in front of him. There was no coming back from this.

He sighed—again—and stepped back. The Shangri-La moved slightly underneath him, bobbing up and down in the cold waters of Riddle Bay.

Today he could see the rocky bottom and a school of tiny fish flashing through the water.

Calling the Twana County Sheriff’s Office was the next order of business, but he resisted.

He was already anticipating the questions they would ask that he did not have answers to.

Why had Elton chosen today to have a dental emergency?

Gabe had avoided interacting with Ranger Man all week until that morning.

Considering they both lived on sailboats moored at the same dock, that was a feat in itself.

Although for Gabe, the Ticket was less home sweet home and more of a rustic camping situation.

But first thing that morning, before he’d even ventured to the grocery store across the street for a hot coffee, there’d been a knock on the hull.

He’d immediately known it was Lundin; there was a certain exasperation to Lundin’s hammering.

That and the fact that they were the only two who lived at the marina.

“What?” Gabe had called out through the galley window.

All he’d been able to see through the glass was Lundin’s denim-covered legs. They were nice-looking legs.

“I’m taking Elton in for an emergency dental thing, a new cap or something. Can you keep an eye on Bowie? I don’t want to leave him in the truck for an extended period, it’s too cold out today.”

Gabe tried not to be offended that Elton hadn’t asked Gabe to drive him. He was an adult, his feelings weren’t hurt because Elton had called Ranger Man and not him. But he did have a new cell phone, Elton could have called him.

“Won’t be more than three or four hours with the drive,” Lundin continued, “maybe less. Elton seems to think the actual procedure won’t take that long.”

“Sure. Bowie and I are tight. He can hang out with me, I don’t have anything going on,” Gabe had agreed casually.

He didn’t have a life anymore. Not unless he counted worrying about the Colavitos, the Anderson brothers, and why Peter hadn’t returned yet. He’d headed topside to let the dog aboard.

The sight of Casey Lundin waiting on the pier, his arms crossed over his broad, flannel-encased chest, made Gabe’s stupid heart skip a beat and brought to mind the Brawny paper towel guy.

He’d covered his reaction with a cough. As he had ever since they’d met, Gabe refused to entertain all the physical ways Casey ticked his boxes because Ranger Man’s personality did nothing for him. He was a popsicle with an unpleasant coating of fuzz. Cold and gritty. Unyielding.

“At least one of you can be trusted not to do anything too stupid. Go on, Bowie, I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

Case in point.

Lundin’s rescue dog had jumped onto the Ticket like he belonged there, his favorite orange tennis ball clutched in his jaws. With a curt “Thank you,” Lundin had stalked off without a backward glance. Presumably headed to Elton’s to pick him up.

“Okay, doggo, I guess it’s just you and me. Nice to have some company.”

For the most part, Gabe had stayed aboard The Golden Ticket over the past week.

It seemed best to avoid the public eye and Lundin, especially with the excitement from the week prior.

The last thing he needed was more unwanted attention.

He’d been lucky to have been treated as a mere bystander after the shooting at the hospital.

It’s called hiding, Chance.

Okay, he had been hiding. Which clearly had been a pointless exercise since Peter had somehow found him. How the fuck?

Gabe had falsely believed the dock was defendable, a refuge.

Safe from a land invasion due to the locked entry to the marina, protected from water attack because the weather was too cold for anyone but arctic fishermen and harbor seals.

Invasion by air was too ridiculous to consider, even for Larry Colavito.

And while there was always the possibility of a James Bond frogman-style attack from under the waves, that also seemed like a lot of effort to go to for a washed-up grifter.

Thus, Gabe had kept to himself. Read a couple of thrillers. Organized his few possessions. Ate premade meals from the store across the road. Slept.

Nothing weird had happened and Peter had never shown up again.

Just minutes after Lundin and Elton had departed, Gabe got a call from the marine supply place in Westfort on his new-to-him burner phone, saying his order had arrived. He and Bowie had driven into town, adding a quick stop for some groceries that weren’t corn chips and a blessed triple Americano.

And returned to a corpse.

A fucking corpse.

Ew, not fucking.