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Alex jerked in my arms, startling me awake. I instantly sat up and reached for him.

“Are you okay?”

Bang, bang, bang.

“Alex!”

Someone was banging on the front door, a man screaming Alex’s name. The sound was audible even on the second floor, the frantic thumping and the muffled yell. Alex grabbed his phone as I jumped out of bed.

“Stay here,”

I told him as I opened the bedroom door and headed down the stairs two at a time, my thoughts racing a mile a minute. Tom really did have some fucking nerve to show up again. Well, he was gonna be greeted with another one of my fists to his face.

I got to the front door and pulled the small curtain at the side window. It… wasn’t Tom. It was actually Mike, and, he looked panicked.

Mike’s eyes met mine as I peered out the window.

“Where’s Alex?”

he shouted through the pane.

Alex came hurrying down the stairs and disarmed the alarm panel so I could open the door. Mike came rushing inside and put his hands on Alex’s shoulders. His face appeared flushed and panicked as he looked between the two of us.

“Are you okay?”

he asked Alex.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Alex asked sleepily.

Mike looked over at me. “Call the cops.”

“What?”

Alex asked in confusion, as he took a step to the side and tried to look past Mike through the open door.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Mike shot me a concerned look and then stepped in front of Alex to block him again.

What the fuck was going on?

“Alex, please don’t go outside,”

Mike pleaded. “Just call the police.”

It was all unfolding so quickly, and Alex was turning frantic. I felt momentarily frozen.

Alex ducked around Mike and walked out onto the porch. Mike’s glance darted desperately to me, and he shook his head wildly. Immediately, I knew Alex shouldn’t be anywhere near whatever was out there.

“Alex, stop!”

I barked. Mike moved aside and I ran out after Alex, who had already made it down the porch steps.

I had fallen asleep in nothing but my boxers, and the frozen air was almost painful as I ran out after him. As I got off the porch, I could see something lying on the ground on the other side of my truck.

“Alex!” I yelled.

He made it around the back of the truck and froze before screaming and covering his face.

I had pulled his head into my chest and covered his face with my hands before I even saw what he was looking at. It took a moment for my eyes to make sense of the sight, but, when I did, my heart leaped in my chest. It was disgusting and cruel, yes. But the implications?

Things just kept falling into place.

Tommy-Boy is a little fucking psycho. How delicious…

Lying on the ground was the body of Alex’s neighbor's Golden Retriever. The animal had been mutilated and sprawled across the driver’s side of my truck. Written in its blood were the words:

MaRK hIm AGain he’s been sick.”

“Do we need medical?”

“He needs to rest.”

The detective pinned me with a look, and I sighed. “I’ll try to get him to come down.”

Don’t like her…

I made my way back upstairs and softly knocked on Alex’s bedroom door. When I got no response, I opened the door slowly and walked in. “Alex?”

He moved slightly and peeked over the blankets at me, his eyes big and hollow.

“Detective Rhodes is here. She wants to talk to you downstairs. I tried to get her to come up, but she’s insisting you come to her.”

I walked over to the side of the bed and caressed his hair. He outstretched his arms and I reached down and pulled him to a sitting position. He laid his head on my chest and clung to me with his fingers.

“I’ve got you,” I vowed.

He sniffled and then pulled himself away. I stood up and helped him to get to his feet. He was walking on his own two feet, but leaning heavily against my side. We slowly made our way downstairs and into the kitchen. I leaned down and picked Alex’s phone up off the landing as we walked by and slipped it into Alex’s pocket.

When we entered, the detective was speaking to a blonde woman who wore way too much makeup. They stopped talking when they noticed our entrance and the woman’s manicured eyebrows flew to her hairline. “Alex!”

That must be Melissa.

She walked over and reached her hand out towards Alex. He immediately flinched away from her and buried his face into the crook of my arm.

Seeing Alex’s reaction, she quickly retracted her hand and took a step back. “I’m sorry,”

she said, looking up at me.

“It’s been a long morning,”

I offered softly. “I’m Gabe.”

“Melissa,”

she replied, her voice thick with emotion. “I’m Alex’s boss.”

Rob walked into the room from the far side. Trailing behind him was one of the largest men I’d ever seen in real life. He must have been 6’5”, with ebony skin that stretched over what had to be at least 300 pounds of hard muscle. He was carrying a laptop and gave everyone in the room a solid once-over before setting the machine down on the counter.

“Detective,”

the man said by way of curt greeting as he nodded towards Rhodes.

The thin woman frowned and rolled her eyes. “I should have known you’d be all over this. Anytime there's a cute little gay boy involved, you come running.”

The man shrugged nonchalantly. “Someone’s got to protect them, Detective. God knows you won’t. Now, you wanna get down to business, or do you want to just keep riding my nuts?”

I coughed to hide my chuckle as the man opened the laptop and clicked away until he’d brought up Westing House’s security cameras. Everyone except Alex scooted closer to the monitor.

The screen showed me pulling into the driveway at 7:14 PM. At 3x speed, I watched Alex walk out onto the porch and approach the side of my truck. He stands there leaning into the open window talking to me for a moment and then you see me get out of the car and follow him into the house. Then, the screen went black.

“That’s all I have,”

the man announced.

“What?”

My sudden bark was enough to startle everyone, even Alex. “You don’t have anything else? The dog? Nothing?”

Some security company…

“Okay, everyone, just relax,”

Rhodes said, putting her hands up in front of her. I stepped back, closer to Alex, and put my arm over him. “What happened, Cal?”

Rhodes asked, turning back to the man with the computer.

“Someone destroyed the sensors to activate the cameras. That’s the first thing I checked when I arrived. They’re gone. All of them.”

“Interesting,”

she began. “I would say our suspect is someone who was here yesterday. Someone who’s close to Alex and able to fly under the radar. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was someone on the construction crew. Someone who was here when the sensors were installed.”

I groaned. “No! It’s not a construction worker, it’s Alex’s so-called friend, Tom.”

“Why would you say that?”

Rhodes asked.

“He showed up here yesterday causing a scene. He was yelling at Alex and grabbed him. I had to fight him to make him leave!”

“You fought him? Physically?”

Cal asked.

I momentarily let go of Alex, and held my bruised knuckles up for them to see.

“So Alex is dealing with a stalker, and some guy shows up here, gets aggressive with him to the point where you have to physically fight him off, and no one comes to the conclusion that we should be notified about it?”

Rhodes asked irritably.

“It’s hard to lead a department of people no one trusts, isn’t it, Detective?”

Cal asked, a small twinkle in his eye.

Rhodes ignored the man’s slight and continued, “The…”

she paused, looking over at Alex, “graffiti on the truck read, mark him again, and I’ll kill you both…”

“Look at Alex’s neck,”

Cal interjected.

Rhodes took a small step closer to Alex. After a moment he turned his head to the side, displaying the trail of love bites I’d left down his throat.

“Hold still,”

she said, taking a quick snap of Alex’s neck with her phone’s camera.

Alex held still as instructed, but turned bright pink with embarrassment.

You have nothing to be ashamed of, baby boy.

“Did you have those marks when this Tom guy showed up yesterday?”

Alex nodded and then turned his face back into my shoulder.

“What’s Tom's last name, and where does he live?”

Tom Hutchinson: born June 18th. He’s 21 years old, 5’11”, 186 pounds. He lives at 5459 Carmichael Way, up in the Camdens. He drives a 2024 gray Ford Explorer, license plate FH5856.

Of course, despite helpfully knowing every single detail of Tom’s biography, I couldn’t say anything, so I held my tongue. Against my side, Alex pulled his phone out of his pocket and began to type into his note app. Once he was finished, he turned the screen around so I could see it.

TOM HUTCHINSON. HE LIVES IN THE CAMDENS. I’M NOT SURE WHERE.

I read the words he had typed out loud for them to hear.

Detective Rhodes turned and whispered something to Cal before speaking to us again.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Caliber is going to take the two of you to the station and I’m gonna go have a little chat with your friend Tom.”

***

Stop-and-go traffic made the drive to the police station slow and frustrating. Alex dozed off leaning on my shoulder as I looked out the window. He was so exhausted and mentally drained. I just wanted him to be able to relax, and start to recover from this. I hated cops, but I had to figure out a way to make sure Tom couldn’t come anywhere near Alex again. I wasn’t able to kill him right now, so this was my only option at the moment.

We walked into the station and Caliber led us into a conference room before excusing himself. We sat there in silence for a good 15 minutes or so until Rhodes walked in and asked us to follow her. Alex put his hand up over his eyes to shield them from the unforgiving fluorescents lining the ceiling.

He’s got a headache, the poor thing. We need to get him out of here and into a dark room.

She led us into a small room with a large window. Caliber was seated on the far side, and I could see Tom perched on a metal chair on the other side of the glass. He looked like an angry hornet, huffing and mumbling to himself with his arms crossed over his chest. The entire side of his face was black and blue, and he had medical gauze taped over one of his eyebrows.

Once we were inside, Caliber offered us a seat, and Rhodes closed the door before walking through a door on the other side of the glass and opening up a file folder she had in her hand.

“Why am I here?”

Tom demanded, the second she sat down.

“Why don’t we start with you telling me how you busted up your face? You’ve got a mean shiner there, Mr. Hutchinson.”

Tom turned up his nose. “I don’t have to tell you shit. I didn’t do anything. How fucking dare you come into my home and demand I come with you in front of my pregnant girlfriend?”

“Did you go to the residence of Alex Winters yesterday?”

Tom’s eyes flashed. “Yeah. So what? I’ve known Alex for years. We grew up together.”

Rhodes looked down at the papers in front of her. “By grew up together, you mean you shared the same foster home for several years?”

Tom nodded flippantly.

“I would hardly consider a few years growing up together.”

“Consider it whatever the fuck you want, lady. You don’t know me, or what we had,” Tom spat.

The detective continued to ask Tom questions that he did everything in his power to skirt around, while Alex became more and more agitated next to me.

“He can’t see you, Alex,”

Caliber offered softly, picking up on Alex’s restlessness.

“Y-y-yess h-h-he c-c-can,”

Alex choked out.

I wrapped my arms around him tighter until they charged Tom with aggravated assault and trespassing, and Rhodes took him away in cuffs as she read him his rights.

I told Alex in the car on the ride back to the house that I was going to call my captain and tell her I wouldn’t be in tonight. Alex had argued with me and insisted that he would be fine. That Tom was in jail, so there was nothing to worry about. I didn’t want to fight with him, so I just held him a little closer.

Tom doesn’t have the balls to sit in jail. He’ll be out well before morning…

If Alex was insisting on me going to work, that gave me an opportunity to stop by and say hello to his pregnant girlfriend while we waited for him to get home…

My pulse rate quickened, and my mouth began to water at the thought of all the fun I could have with the two of them.

The cops are hot on you with all this mess with Alex… it has to look like an accident. Or that Tom had done it.

How?

With fire…