Page 41 of Skin Game
“Hey,” Casey said, stepping into Gabe’s space and settling his hands on Gabe’s waist. “Do you want to stay at mine tonight? We’ll have to do something about the window though.”
Gabe may have been a grifter most of his life, but Casey was fast becoming a Gabriel Karne expert. He could tell that Gabe was shaken. And so was Casey.
“Remember, I have a nice, quiet sailboat moored behind a locked gate.”
“Yeah. And look how well that gate kept out Rizzi and whoever.”
He had a point.
“If the mysterious ‘they’ are after something here, it’s not happening. The hell I’m hiding onTheBarbara. I’m mad now. Pissed fucking off.”
“And you’re not gonna take it anymore?” Casey said, one eyebrow raised. The last thing he needed was Gabe on a rampage. Who really knew what kind of trouble he could get into.
“Something like that.”
Casey only had to angle his head a tad to press his lips against Gabe’s. He was rewarded with a little puff of a sigh, then Gabe loosely wrapped his arms around Casey’s shoulders while they kissed.
Gabe, Casey had learned, very much enjoyed the act of kissing,and by proxy, Casey now did too. Having Gabe in his life was akin to opening an unexpected present every day.
Sometimes Gabe was wild and out of control, which, ironically, Casey had never thought he wanted in a partner, but he couldn’t imagine Gabe any other way. Other times, like this one, he needed to be held and protected. Not worshipped, coveted. And Casey was happy to oblige.
“We’ll stay here for tonight, then,” Casey said. “Together.” Stepping away from Gabe, he added, “But we need to secure the window and call TCSO’s non-emergency number to notify them first. Do you have any plywood?”
“In what universe would I, Gabriel Karne, have plywood randomly sitting around? I don’t even have a fucking saw.” He spun around and pointed at Alfred. “That’s the closest thing I’ve got, and with no saw, we are out of luck. And you don’t know how sad that makes me right now.” He threw in an extra glare at the monstrosity.
“How about the pizza box?” Casey suggested mildly.
“That’s good enough for me. I’ll hide it with the shade.”
Casey blinked,then squinted against the light that had dragged him awake. He was alone in Gabe’s bed, the sheet and blankets tangled around his legs as if he’d gone several rounds with an imaginary opponent.
He lay there for a moment, listening for Gabe. The man wasn’t particularly quiet, but he’d managed to get out of bed without disturbing him—except he’d left the bedroom door ajar and the light from the living room had woken Casey. Also the click-clack of Gabe tapping on a keyboard.
Casey rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up, his joints cracking and snapping as he stretched and set his feet on the carpet According to his watch, it wasn’t even five a.m. yet.Slipping back into his jeans but deciding against a shirt, he padded out to the living room.
Gabe sat on the couch, his laptop balanced on his thighs and a cheap pair of blinged-out reading glasses perched on his nose. Whatever he was reading, it had his full attention, so much so that he didn’t hear Casey’s approach.
“What are you doing awake?” he asked.
“Jesus!” Gabe’s head jerked around toward Casey. “Don’t scare me like that again, you’ll kill me.” Gabe snatched the ridiculous glasses off his face. He insisted that he’d bought them as a joke, but Casey’d caught him wearing the garish rhinestone-festooned frames more than once.
“Well?” Casey said.
“Well, what?”
Oh, they were playing this game, then.
“Well, what are you doing up before daylight?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I had to see if I could find anything. You know, research and so forth.” Gabe set the glasses on the arm of the couch and started to get up. “You want coffee?”
“Yeah, but you stay where you are, I’ll make it. Have you found anything interesting?”
“I don’t know what I don’t know, which makes this extra difficult.” He slid the reading glasses back on and leaned close to the laptop screen again. “We’re so used to everything being online these days, but not everything has been digitized, even if I wish it was.”
Casey nodded and busied himself making an espresso. While he was at it, Keith emerged from hiding to wrap around his ankles. “Trying to assassinate me, are you?” Casey asked. Keith rewarded him with a gravelly meow, which Casey was taking as a solidyes.
“I miss physical phone books. Back in the day, a person could just flip through one and see how many people, say, namedPritchard had Westfort addresses, give a person something to start with. Butnoooo. Now I have to slog through this crap. And most of these asshole companies want me to pay for a subscription—fucking outrageous!—for information that used to be free. They steal our information and sell it back to us, which is a scam I never considered. I’m rambling, but I need to know what I’m looking for first—and I do not.” Gabe sat back again, arching his back and rolling his shoulders.