Page 71 of Sean's Sunshine
“We’re going to be at his place at nine. I’ll see what he says and text you.”
“Your nurse gonna be with you?” Andres asked.
Sean looked to where Billy was propped up on his elbow, those remarkable eyes sharp with listening to his side of the conversation. “Yeah, why?”
Andres voice went from hard and “cop mode” to personal. “’Cause you’re still not a hundred percent, and I know he won’t let you overdo it. Text me. Keep Rivers alive. See you later.”
“So what’s doin’?” Billy asked. “And come back to bed for a minute. There needs to be a snuggle.”
Sean grinned at him and did as he asked. “Not too much of this,” he warned, enjoying Billy’s chest and his kiss on the temple. “We can’t be late to go meet Rivers.”
“Why? What was that about?”
Warm and secure and rested, Sean explained the situation, and Billy even laughed at the part where Riversdidhave his own personal gaming controls. But when Sean wrapped it up, ready to go shower, Billy made him pause.
“This was your union president?” he asked for clarification.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem all broken up about it.”
Sean’s face got grim. “He wasn’t a very good person,” Sean said. “He wasn’t taking our department in a good direction. I know it sounds bad, but I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
Billy nodded. “Maybe I need to get better at politics so I can keep up with which cops are good cops and which ones aren’t.”
Sean smiled at him, feeling a little dazzled. So cute, so smart, so cynical—it was like he’d been made for Sean. “Just remember I’m a good one,” he said soberly.
Billy nodded. “Yeah, cop. I’ll do that.”
He kissed Sean on the temple, and it was time to start their day.
Reckoning
BILLY GLANCEDat Sean, sitting in the passenger’s seat on the way home from Jackson’s house with a tiny brown dog cuddled in his arms, and tried not to be too mad.
It had been one hell of a day.
Sure, yeah, let’s go babysit the guy on medical leave—it’ll be a blast!He thought sardonically.
Except Sean had gotten that phone call in the morning, and by the time they’d gotten to Ellery Cramer’svery nicehouse on American River Drive, their easy morning had been rewritten into fifty-dozen stops, including one in which a very sweet woman who reminded him of his sister Teresa had fed thempan dolceand horchata, and another in which Sean snuck him inside a crime scene and tried to triangulate a sniper’s bullet.
The whole thing had ended back at Cramer and Rivers’s place with everybody—likeeverybody from the flophouse—frantically searching through traffic footage looking for the guy who’d killed a guy that Sean had proclaimed a political douchebag who made the police look worse than they already did.
Billy understood none of it. Oh yeah, he understood his specific tasks.
“Here, look through the window and see where the red laser pointer goes!”
Well, that was easy; it landed on Henry’s shirt half a mile away. Even through the binoculars, Billy had seen Henry almost shit his pants when that little red dot showed up on his chest. It would have been high comedy, except he and Sean had been standing in a room that still had a bloodstain from the last guy who’d seen the little red laser pointer dot on his chest. They’d felt bad for scaring Henry, even with a little pencil light.
“Here, pick up some Chinese food while we gather everybody from the flophouse to study traffic cam footage to see who might have killed the guy from half a mile away!”
Done. Billy even knew where the place was that had the vegan noodles, although he was a little bit surly that he couldn’t eat any, since he’d pretty much pushed his window with the pan dolce that morning. He’d gotten a carton of veggies and figured a little bit of noshing on that was what he usually ate three days before a scene, so it should be fine.
“Here, look for someone suspicious on the traffic cam footage on your laptop, with all your flophouse friends!”
Well, that had been easy, and fun, really, like a work party. The whole lot of them had been chatting back and forth while the tiny dog that Rivers and Henry had rescued had been passed from guy to guy, all of them trying to comfort the poor thing after he’d been separated from his owner in the mess that had gotten Jackson wounded in the first place.
So Billy had lots to do during the day, but none of it felt as if it was under his control.