Fishy Riot, page 20
“And that I want you to do it again,” Sietta agreed breathlessly.
Feeling rather pleased with himself, Taylor cleaned them up and bundled Sietta in a towel before drying himself off and going to bed. He didn’t bother with boxers and was delighted when Sietta hesitated only a moment before crawling in to bed beside him, gloriously naked. He pulled him in closer and rolled them over, spooning behind him, wrapping Sietta up in the safety of his arms, trusting him to be nowhere else.
He grabbed his phone in the dark and made the few calls he needed to Joel and Headquarters, then tossed it onto the bedside.
Sietta was warm and solid in his arms. Sleep came quickly and stole him away.
12: Driving Pam Off-road
“SOMEONE TRIED to ram you off the road?”
The sun was barely up, rays of light sneaking in under the curtains, crashing through the open bedroom door where Clay was silhouetted, still gripping the handle tight, his face fixed in a dark scowl.
Taylor lifted his head in confusion from where it had somehow ended up in Sietta’s lap.
“Can you quit with the barging in on people?” Taylor snapped.
Clay paused, looked from Sietta, who was naked save for the sheet draped over his lap, then looked at Taylor, who was completely naked. He shrugged as if nothing at all were out of the ordinary.
“That’s the second time, Tay! They’ve tried to kill him twice, and subsequently you! Third time’s supposed to be lucky! What if they try a third time, huh? What are you gonna do then?”
“Die?” That would be the point in that scenario if the third time was lucky. But Sietta smacked him as if that were the wrong answer, and he sighed, grabbing a corner of the sheet and pulling it over himself, then sitting up beside Sietta against the headboard and taking a better look at Clay. He was still in his overalls from work. He was filthy, covered in dirt, dry sweat, and what looked like chalk. He had leaves in his short hair and a bandage on his arm. He looked rougher than Taylor had seen in a long time. He also looked worried, and for that Taylor felt the irrational need to apologise. He didn’t, but he still felt like he should.
“We’re fine. It was dealt with, easily.”
“Easily? Have you seen your car? The back end is pancaked! It’s gonna be in the shop for weeks! They hurt your Lux, man!”
“And it’s repairable, and Si and I are fine. We’re not even injured, which is more than I can say for you. What the hell happened?” He waved a hand in Clay’s general direction, amused as he watched the scowl on his brother’s face darken.
“I am never pairing with Mendel again! He almost killed me!” And with that, Clay stormed out of the bedroom, slamming the door, and a minute later they heard the shower in the main bathroom turn on.
Sietta looked Taylor in the eye, very serious. “We are putting a lock on the door.”
“We are putting a lock on the door,” Taylor agreed immediately, leaning in to kiss Sietta good morning, loving the way he melted back into the pillows and tried to pull him closer with a faint moan.
“Come on, I need to make sure he’s okay. I’ll make you a tea.”
“Make sure he’s okay?” Sietta mumbled as he followed him from the bed and started getting dressed. “I’m the one who had a Viking charge into their bedroom unannounced before the sun even came up. People must be so terrified when you guys do a raid. There you are just innocently dozing away—and bam! Door breaks down and Captain America-Hulk chimera comes barging in, screaming in your face. The poor sods who are innocent when you get the wrong intel….”
Taylor shut him up with another kiss, chuckling because it was cute when Sietta rambled. He left him to finish getting dressed and went to the kitchen, putting the kettle on and getting the coffee machine going. Clay looked like he could use a good sleep, but if he intended to stay up, he was going to need coffee.
While Clay was showering and Taylor was making coffee, he also rang Joel, putting him on speaker phone as he walked.
“Taylor?”
“Hey, Joel. Clay’s here.”
“Ah, cool. I wondered if he’d finished yet. He sent a message in the middle of the night saying he wouldn’t be home until about seven.”
“Yeah, he’s had a rough night by the looks of it. He’s pissed at me.”
“I thought you were off duty for the rest of the week?”
Sietta emerged in his all-black ensemble and sat at the bench but stayed quiet, watching Taylor work.
“Yeah…. Our incident last night. It’s freaked Clay out. Call the number they gave you and just check in, find out what they’re doing, okay? It’ll make him feel better. I’ll call them too.”
“Okay.” Joel sounded concerned but didn’t ask any questions, trusting him to deal with it. “Take care of yourself, yeah?”
“You too.” He hung up and finished making the coffees before putting a cup of hot water in front of Sietta and watching him peruse the tea chest, selecting a bag of Russian caravan.
When the coffee was made, he sat beside Sietta on a stool at the bench and waited.
Clay emerged, looking cleaner but not necessarily any calmer. He had dressed in jeans and a plain black T-shirt, his hair still wet, dripping a little down his neck, feet bare as he walked out to stand opposite them, then grabbed his coffee and took a long sip before putting it down and staring at them. First one, then the other, then again and again, his eyes squinting the longer he kept it up.
“You deflowered the virgin,” he accused suddenly, and Sietta choked on his tea, coughing hard. Taylor rubbed his back while rolling his eyes at his brother.
“I have not deflowered the virgin,” he corrected, nonetheless amused that this was the discussion Clay was choosing to have.
“Well, you’ve done something to him. You were naked together, in bed.”
“We can’t sleep naked without doing naughty things to each other?” Taylor arched a brow, curious to see where his brother would go with the conversation.
“No, you can’t.”
“Well, we did,” he pointed out, and Sietta nodded emphatically, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but right there. It was cute, but Taylor didn’t let him get away. Sietta needed to get used to Clay, because Taylor refused to let go of either of them.
“You did something. I can tell!”
“Well, if you must know, I gave him a hand job yesterday, and last night I blew him in the shower,” Taylor explained, as if talking about the weather. Sietta choked on his tea again, the blush Taylor loved so much infusing his cheeks, and even Clay looked startled, as if unable to believe he would confess that.
“I did not need to know that!”
“You practically demanded I tell you!”
Clay’s mouth worked, but no words escaped. He took another huge gulp of coffee and then pointed between them. “So this is a thing? You two?”
“This is a thing,” Taylor agreed, looking to Sietta to check, and holding his breath when he realised he wasn’t the only one who got a say in it. But Sietta dubiously took a cautious sip of his tea and sighed heavily when no one said anything to make him choke on it.
“Huh. Shoulda seen that coming,” Clay hissed under his breath. “I mean, I was hoping, but you’re an asshole, so there was no guarantee he’d let you… you know.”
“I know.” Taylor rolled his eyes again, aware of Sietta chuckling beside him. It made him uncomfortably hard.
“Who’s trying to kill you?” Clay demanded suddenly, this time staring at Sietta. Clay had spent the night executing warrants that in no way indicated any danger to Sietta. The attempts on his life weren’t adding up, unless they had a different purpose.
“How do you just change topics like that?” Sietta spluttered.
“Practise. Our mother raised us,” Clay grunted. “Someone tried to shoot you, and now they’ve tried to ram you off the damn road. Who?”
“He has no clue,” Taylor intervened. “But we are looking into his sister. Also, we don’t know they’re trying to kill him. Maybe they just want to scare him. They’ve failed twice.”
“Ah… that makes sense.” Clay actually calmed down, grabbing a chair and dragging it over, sitting down with a heavy sigh and sipping his coffee while he thought about whatever was going through his head.
“I’m sorry, that makes sense how?” Sietta looked thoroughly confused. Taylor knew the feeling. “Viola hating my guts, or people trying to scare the shit out of me instead of kill me?”
“Oh, right. When they arrested Viola Salisbury, she was actually out in the western suburbs. Interestingly, she was in the company of Curtis Frey,” Clay continued as if Sietta hadn’t spoken at all.
“Who?” Sietta still looked lost, but Taylor swore and slumped forward, leaning his chin on his fist as he contemplated what that could mean.
“Seriously?”
Clay morosely drew patterns on his thigh and let Taylor think on it while Sietta glared between them, waiting for someone to explain.
“Frey’s one of the biggest drug dealers in the city at the moment,” Taylor tried to explain while he was still trying to work things out in his head. “We’re still following down the leads, but we’re almost certain he supplied the drugs on the ferry.”
“Which makes even more sense if he’s working with Viola. We always wondered how it worked, because Frey’s not that smart, more a thug than anything, we couldn’t see how he was running his ship. But if it’s Viola behind him, that’s a different thing,” Clay mused. “Still doesn’t explain why she’s after you.”
“I dunno….” Sietta seemed dazed but was forcing himself to work through it and think. “Kind of ironic, that he’s free and she’s been arrested, and not for the drugs but for being complicit in her parents locking up her fag brother.”
They both frowned at him, but he didn’t say anything else. He was right; it was ironic, if she was the mastermind behind the drugs. But it didn’t explain why she’d decided he needed to die, and if she’d wanted him dead, there had to be easier ways to go about it. Ways that would actually succeed, because so far the attempts just ensured Sietta was better protected.
“How smart’s your sister?” Clay asked.
“A little less Anders, a little more than Micah, but not me?” Sietta shrugged, as if comparing your siblings in such a competitive way were normal. To him it probably was.
“Oooh… what would that make us?” Clay latched on immediately. Taylor couldn’t tell if it was because he was tired or the coffee high. He was honestly just happy they weren’t talking about sex anymore.
“No Hay, way less Ash, a little Lei, but not quite Bray.” Taylor drank his coffee in a few large gulps before it got too cold.
“No way, Ash is like the little cardboard cut-out version of you two,” Sietta argued. “The older he gets, the worse it’s gonna be. It’ll be like there are three of you, or something.”
They looked at him, horrified.
“I’m wounded.” Clay shook his head as if Sietta had suggested he was going to cause the apocalypse.
“So she’s smart, she’s potentially a drug runner, and she hates your guts. Why is that again?” Taylor eyed Sietta dubiously. He said her hatred predated his familial incarceration, but that meant he’d barely been in his teens. What could he have possibly done to make her hate him like that?
“No clue. I told you, she’s never really bothered to include me in her life. It’s like we were never related.” To him it was a fact of life. Viola hated him, case closed. He’d never needed a why. It just was. Taylor couldn’t imagine having that kind of toxic relationship with one of his siblings. His family was crazy, but at least they all knew they were loved.
“I rang Joel. Hale said he would arrange an officer to stalk him for you, and Joel said he’ll keep a closer eye on Micah.”
“Thanks.” Clay sighed and fished his phone out of his pocket, quickly sending a text letting Joel know he was going to crash at home and then he’d be over after school for the afternoon and dinner before his shift.
“What happened to your arm?” Taylor pointed to the wet bandage, and Clay blinked at it, as if he’d forgotten it was there.
“Agh! I need you to clean it for me, or Bray’s gonna bite my face off. We had this warrant for Joseph Summers….”
“Oh, he’s a total dick! He did all these insider trading deals through his company with politicians and they used all the funds to top up election campaign funds….” Sietta trailed off at the looks he was receiving and sipped his tea, pretending he knew nothing. “The guy hates whales.”
“So, Mendel and I were arresting Summers when the total dick decided to run out the back and get his Rottweiler to distract us while he tried to get away. Mendel jumped over the dog and tackled Summers, which left me to deal with Pam—the dog, who mistook me for a chew toy.”
“Ouch.” Taylor and Sietta winced.
“What was the white stuff?” Taylor distinctly remembered him looking like he’d rolled in chalk.
“Gypsum. I shoved a bag of it, sitting by the garden, in Pam’s mouth to get my arm free, and she tore the bag wide open, flung it everywhere.”
“Did it get in the wound?” Taylor got up and fetched the first aid kit from above the fridge.
“Yeah, but I went and saw Bray, and he cleaned it all out. I needed a few stitches, but he said I should clean it again when I got home and make sure it wasn’t getting infected. He wouldn’t let me leave until I swore I would let you look at it this morning.”
“Good,” Taylor grunted. Clay was terrible at getting first aid, which was hilarious considering he was the first one to demand someone else go get it.
Taylor peeled the bandage off, wincing at the jagged line of tidy stitches and the assortment of punctures and grazes. The dog had done a good job, but so had Brayden. The wound looked clean, but Taylor rinsed it in antiseptic to be sure, placed a fresh gauze over it, and wrapped it in a new bandage. The whole while Clay sipped his coffee, watching Sietta, who sipped his tea and tried to ignore him.
“Stop staring at him,” Taylor grumbled as he tucked the corner of the bandage into place.
“Why? He’s pretty, I like looking at him.”
While it was fun to watch Sietta blush, Taylor didn’t like sharing, even with Clay, even for fun. “He’s mine.”
Taylor was very aware of the eyes staring at him, but he refused to look at either of them, and neither dared to say a thing. He cleaned up the coffee machine and finished his cup.
“Well, I am going to crash for a few hours. Please try not to get killed before this afternoon.” Clay headed for his bedroom.
“Sure.” Sietta watched him go before putting his cup in the sink and grabbing Taylor’s arm, tugging him around to look at him. He was smiling. Taylor thought that was probably a good thing.
“You’re mine,” Sietta mumbled, pulling him down for several long, toe-curling kisses that left Taylor warm in ways he’d never been warm.
Taylor’s phone buzzed on the counter, and he picked it up quickly when he saw Brayden’s name. “I just finished bandaging it and sent him to bed.”
“How bad’s your car?”
Taylor groaned, cursing Clay for telling Brayden and praying Brayden had the sense not to tell anyone else what had happened. If he was lucky, he’d get it into the panel beaters in the next few days and it would be back in one piece before the family ever knew something had happened.
“It’s fine, I got rear-ended a few times. Not a hard fix.”
“And you?”
“Not a scratch on us.”
“Us, hey?”
Taylor inwardly cursed again. Stupid mouth. Stupid brain. “Us,” he agreed, eyeing Sietta as he put his shoes on. They were going somewhere? He started searching for his boots.
“Emma wants to see your car. Send me a photo.”
“Sure she does.” Taylor sighed. “I’ll send one when I go to the car,” he promised. “Honestly, it wasn’t a problem. It was more a nuisance than anything.”
“Only you would think getting rammed by fools trying to kill you was a nuisance.”
“We don’t know they were trying to kill us,” he reasoned, even if he 100 percent knew they were trying to kill them. He didn’t need to worry everyone else with that idea, even if they already thought it as well.
“Please, I was a soldier. They are trying to kill him, and you’re with him, so they’re trying to kill you. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“You were a medic,” Taylor corrected. “Besides, they could be trying to scare him.”
“Still counts. To what end?”
“It’s fine. I know what I’m doing. Let me do my job and you do yours.”
“You’re still my little brother, I’m still going to worry, and I’m still going to tell you to be careful.”
“Yes, sir.” Taylor chuckled and hung up, turning to see Sietta on the couch, watching him.
“Wanna make out for a while?”
Hell yes he did.
“Why do we need shoes on to make out?”
“What…? My feet were cold, idiot.”
HIS PHONE rang again and Taylor fumbled over the side of the couch to pick it up off the floor where it had fallen from his pocket at some point while he was trying to crawl inside Sietta’s mouth.
“Hello?”
“Come let me in. I don’t want to wake your brother by knocking on the door,” his father demanded, and Taylor sighed, forced himself from the couch and his comfortable position curled up around Sietta, then went to open the front door.
“Hi.” He stepped aside, and Daniel stalked in, far more energetically than usual. Which meant he was pissed. Great. Taylor wondered what he’d done this time, but he didn’t have to wait long. His father fixed him with a glare from the middle of the living room, arms crossed over his chest, standing at his full formidable height. They’d inherited it from one of their parents, after all, but it rarely looked like Daniel since he was always lazing in a chair somewhere.
“What happened to your car?”
“It got rear-ended,” he mumbled, really not wanting to have this conversation.
