Venetian Masks (26 page)

Chapter 18

T
HE
bright sun that poured through the window did little to lift Jeff’s mood. Neither did the foul taste in his unbrushed mouth, or the necessity of putting on dirty clothes—his only clothes—after he’d showered. Well, he knew where the Billa was; he could go buy toiletries. He could pick up a change of clothes at a nearby shop as well. But first he needed lots of caffeine.

He hadn’t slept well. He’d woken up twice from nightmares: one in which his brothers were bitten by black widow spiders, and one in which he had watched Cleve drown in the green water of the Grand Canal. At least he hadn’t screamed loud enough to bring anyone running to his room. Now, as he stomped through Venice’s charming streets, his mind and stomach roiled with a mixture of emotions so complex he felt dizzy. He was furious at Cleve for lying to him and leaving him again, he was terrified that Eddie Weibull might have finally caught up with him, he was desolate with loss, he was astonished at the depth of feeling for a man he’d met less than two weeks earlier. And he was a little adrift, all by himself and far from anyone he knew.

However lost he felt, his feet knew the way to his favorite café—the one where he’d met Cleve—which was only a short distance from the hotel. He ordered espresso, bread, and jam. He wasn’t hungry, but he thought he should get something in his stomach besides coffee, or else he really might be sick. Every time he glanced in the direction of the nearby canal, he half expected to see Cleve’s body floating sluggishly between the stone banks.

After he ate, he walked. He didn’t have a destination in mind and didn’t make any conscious choices about where to go. He simply put one foot in front of the other, twisting and turning along the narrow streets, stepping up and over the little bridges. Just about when the complaints from his feet became almost too bad to ignore, he discovered that he was near Hotel Ca’ Luna. He took a detour to Billa for toothpaste, toothbrush, floss, comb, razor, and deodorant. Remembering his formerly meticulous travel accounting, he couldn’t help a wry smile as he entered an expensive shop and paid far too much for a designer T-shirt, underwear, and socks. He bought a sandwich on his way back to the hotel.

A young woman with curly brown hair was behind the desk. She gave him a professional smile when he entered the lobby. “Hi,” he said. “Jeff Dawkins. Are there any messages for me?”

He hadn’t really been hopeful about it, but he was still disappointed when she shook her head.

When he got to his room, he stripped off his clothes and washed everything but the jeans in the sink, then hung them to dry in the shower. He put on his new boxers and his old jeans, but the room was a little stuffy, so he didn’t bother with the rest. No point sweating unnecessarily on his only clean clothes. He ate his sandwich and then took a restless nap.

He dreamed of Cleve again, standing in a little rowboat in the small canal they’d passed in Trieste. Cleve was dancing slowly and sensuously, like a stripper who hadn’t yet taken off his clothes, but the boat was wobbling and his face was frozen with fear. Jeff tried to call to him, but he knew in the dream that Cleve didn’t speak English, and Jeff couldn’t think of how to say his name in Croatian. Then a thunderbolt clapped and a huge bloody wound opened in Cleve’s chest. He toppled overboard and sank.

Jeff woke up with the taste of metal in his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue in his sleep.

A glance at the clock told him it was a little past seven. Pretty soon he should think about dinner. And then he should probably think about what he was going to do next. His reservations in Paris and London still awaited him, but he had no taste for more tourism. Maybe he should see if he could find a room at the Venetian time-share. Maybe he should see if he could change his plane tickets.

Instead, when he booted up his laptop, he logged into his credit card account. The last charge was from the night before, from the train station in Trieste. He considered canceling the card but just couldn’t do it. It remained his only link with Cleve, and he wasn’t ready to give that up. In fact, he found himself fervently hoping that more purchases would show up soon, because that would mean that Cleve was still… alive.

Jeff ran to the bathroom and vomited sour bile.

After brushing his teeth with his newly purchased brush and a really strange herbal-flavored toothpaste, he returned to his computer. There was an e-mail from his mother:

Jeffy,

Great news! I got them up to 210k. So you’ll have a little pocket money left over when this is done. Maybe a down payment on a new place or maybe you’re already planning your next vacation. They want a 30 day closing but I told them that won’t be a problem. If you don’t find a new place to live as soon as you get back, you can always put your furniture in storage and come stay with us for a while. Your bedroom is still yours.

I love you, Jeffy, and your dad and I are really proud of you.

Mom

Thirty years old and living in his parents’ spare bedroom. There was a time—not long ago at all—when that would have felt like the worst fate on earth.

Mom,

Thanks. You’re the best, you know that? I’m really, really lucky to have you and Dad.

Love,

Jeff

He was a little worried that the e-mail would freak his mother out. He wasn’t usually very demonstrative in his communication with his parents. But he sent it anyway.

He spent a little time surfing the Internet, but when the temptation to Google Max Palmer became too strong, he shut the thing down. Still half-dressed, he lay down on the bed with his Kindle.

He was reading a paranormal romance in which a vampire hunter falls in love with a vampire and then becomes a werewolf, which leads to a whole lot of problems with the local witches’ coven—or something like that. He couldn’t quite keep his mind on the plot. He’d only bought the thing in the first place because in the sample, the vamp in question reminded him a little of Spike from the
Buffy
series. But it turned out that the novel’s bloodsucker was actually a pretty major wimp, and whiny to boot. Besides, it was really hard to empathize with the characters’ stupid imaginary problems when Jeff had very real problems of his own. “Just fuck, already,” he muttered. He was just about ready to toss the Kindle aside when the room’s door opened.

For a moment—a very short moment—he thought it might be Cleve. Jeff could picture the way his lover would enter the room, beautiful hair shining and confident grin in place. Jeff could almost taste Cleve’s mouth against his.

But of course it wasn’t Cleve who entered the room.

Before Jeff could do more than sit upright, before he could even shout, the door slammed shut again and two men rushed the short distance to the bed. The bald one got there first, enormous hands reaching for Jeff’s throat.

Jeff’s response was pure instinct. Gripping his Kindle firmly in both hands, he rammed the edge of it into the bridge of Bob’s nose. The sounds of shattering plastic and crunching bone were horrifyingly loud, and one of the Kindle shards pierced deeply into Jeff’s palm. Bob emitted a beastlike howl. As he stumbled backward, his hands flew to his face but couldn’t stanch the fountain of blood spurting between his fingers. He took another step back, bumped into the wall, and fell to the floor. He didn’t get back up again.

“Well, that’s a shame. He wasn’t all that pretty to begin with.” Edvin Weibull’s voice had just a trace of an accent. He was dressed in fashionable clothes that probably cost more than Jeff’s first car: designer jeans, a bright-blue shirt slightly open at the neck, a sports jacket tailored just right. Gold flashed on his wrists and fingers, but Jeff was more concerned with other metal—the dull black of the gun in Eddie’s right hand.

Jeff scrambled to his feet and snarled like a cornered animal. “Motherfucker!”

“Actually, I prefer fucking sons.” Eddie smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. He would be very handsome, Jeff thought, sort of dashing and distinguished-looking, if it weren’t for his eyes. They were the same flat blue-gray he remembered, chillingly inhuman and brutal. “Where’s Tommy, Jeff?”

His own name spoken so casually by this man was enough to make Jeff’s balls try to crawl up into his belly. And for some reason it pissed him off that Eddie called Cleve “Tommy.”

“I don’t know,” Jeff said as calmly as he could.

“Of course you know. You’ve been fucking his sweet ass, haven’t you? Does he beg you for it, Jeff? I always liked it when he begged.” Eddie spoke as pleasantly as if he were discussing the weather, or where someone might get a nice bowl of pasta.

“He took off. I don’t know where.”

Eddie shook his head and came a step closer, still smiling and with the gun held steady. Jeff realized with increasing dismay that the guy was batshit crazy. The cold kind of lunatic, like the ones who blow away a dozen innocent bystanders and then serenely explain why.

“I suggest you tell me now, Jeff. If I don’t get too angry, I might even let you live. It’s that faithless bitch I want.”

Another step. Jeff backed away but didn’t get far before he was against the wall. He looked longingly at the door behind Eddie’s tall frame. “He doesn’t want you, Eddie. Why don’t you give it up? You’re rich. You could have anyone.” Jeff knew reasoning wasn’t going to help, but maybe it would buy him a few minutes. What he was going to do with those few minutes, he had no idea.

“I don’t want
anyone
. I want Tommy. Sweet Tommy, with the scars and the muscles and that amazing fucking mouth.”

“But he doesn’t want you.”

“What that slut wants is irrelevant. He belongs to me.” Eddie cocked his head slightly. “I suppose you think he loves you. That you’re more to him than a hard dick and an open wallet.” He came closer, and now Jeff could almost have reached out and touched him.

The wallpaper was cool against Jeff’s bare back, and there were damp spots that were probably splatters of Bob’s blood. Jeff shivered, picturing his own blood drying there too, red on red on red. “I don’t know where he is,” he said. “I really don’t. But I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

Eddie smiled gently at him. “How brave of you. What if I told you that when I’m done here, I’m going to track down every member of your family and have them killed too? I had no problem finding Tommy when he rabbited across Europe. Do you think I’ll have much of a challenge finding information on an upstanding citizen like you?”

Jeff realized he was in very real danger of puking again. He didn’t want to die like that, half-naked in a puddle of vomit. That was how rock stars died, not IT guys. “I think you’ve been watching too many movies,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even. “You sound like a clichéd villain. I think maybe you’d be played by Gary Oldman. Or another British guy. Have you noticed that the bad guys always have British accents?”

“I’m Swedish.”

“Congratulations,” Jeff replied. “I’m a big fan of IKEA and Alexander Skarsgård.”

Eddie’s lips were still raised, but now his expression was more feral than merry. He aimed the gun squarely at Jeff’s crotch. “Where is Tommy?” he hissed.

And that’s when the door opened again.

This time it really was Cleve, dressed in his familiar jeans and leather jacket, and a tight white T-shirt that looked brand-new. His hair was mussed, and his face was covered in dark whiskers. His eyes opened wide in shock at the scene in front of him.

Eddie whirled around to point the gun at him, and Cleve moved slowly, his hands in the air. But it was to Jeff that he spoke. “I’m sorry. Christ, I’m so sorry.”

Jeff was thankful for the wall; without its support, he might have collapsed. “Cleve, goddammit—”

“Leave him alone,” Cleve pleaded, now looking at Eddie instead. “He’s just some guy I was using for a while. Just Jeff. C’mon, Eddie. Let’s go talk this over.”

Eddie gestured toward Jeff with the gun. “He seems to think it’s something more. He got all
noble
over you.”

“He’s just this lonely guy who got dumped by his boyfriend. He was easy to fool.”

Cleve’s words were at least as true as anything else he’d said in Jeff’s presence over the past days, and despite the adrenaline rushing through Jeff’s veins and the terror like lead in his stomach, his heart broke a little and he blushed crimson with shame.

Moving a little nearer to Eddie, his hands still held high, Cleve lowered his voice to a sexy rumble. “Let’s go, Eddie. We can go to that hotel we stayed at that one time—the one on the island? Nice and private. You can… you can punish me if you want to. I bet you want to.”

Jeff couldn’t see Eddie’s face, but something shifted in his posture. He looked less tense, more… almost playful, in a bizarre kind of way. “I’m going to kill you, Tommy Prieto,” he said. Lightly, not threateningly.