“That’s why you’re looking for your Miki? Because he’s that part of you?”
“Yeah, that’s why I need to find Miki. He is a part of me. He’s more than a brother. He’s… a piece of my pain. A part of my music.” Damien exhaled hard, unable to find the words he needed to use to tell Sionn how he felt about the young man he’d found one rainy night. “That’s why we need to pick our shit up off the floor and keep going. Not just because we owe it to Johnny and Dave, but because we owe it to ourselves. The accident? That shit’s nothing compared to what we’d already been through.”
He would have said more. Hell, he needed to say more, but the words on his tongue were trapped, caught in a kiss Sionn wrapped him into. Turning, Damien knew he needed to pull away, to push back the man he could lose himself in, if only to give Sionn the space to walk away. But when Damien felt the man tugging at his T-shirt, then felt the cool rush of air on his tattoo, everything changed, twisting his good intentions to the side.
Knowing he’d regret ever letting Sionn touch him, Damien still let himself be pushed back onto the bed and opened his mouth to take whatever Sionn wanted to give him.
INSPECTOR KANE MORGAN stepped over the apartment’s threshold and immediately regretted not taking a uniformed officer’s offer of VapoRub for under his nose. He knew it was going to be bad just by the looks of the outside of the building. It sat as a spot of decaying poverty in a vibrant city, a roach-infested shelter of people who wanted or needed to disappear in plain sight.
The stench of new decomposition hit him hard, nearly filtering out the musky stink of cigarettes and rotting garbage. A light buzzing of flies kept up a steady humming aria near a mound of gray and white froth on the edge of a plastic covered couch, and Kane blinked, suddenly realizing he was actually looking at a pile of burst intestines.
“Hey, Morgan.” The medical examiner on scene was someone he was familiar with, a pretty blond woman who had a stomach soldered together from cast iron and Teflon. “Are you here to poke at this mess with me?”
“I’ll be over there in a minute, Dr. Horan. Right after I get into a fight.” Kane waved as he walked by, gesturing he’d be right back.
For such a small apartment, the place seemed packed to the gills with law enforcement and forensics crews. He was looking for someone in particular and found the junior detective in the kitchen, painstakingly dusting the counter edges for prints. The man looked up when he heard Kane approach, and his handsome face soured into a grimace.
“Oh, fuck you, Kane,” Riley swore at him. “Get the hell off my case.”
“No can do, baby brother.” Kane rocked back on his heels. “Brownie called in half dead. Case’s been rolled over to us.”
He held up his hands to warn off his younger brother from blowing. Riley’s face was a study in Morgan anger, mingled with a healthy dose of his mother’s Finnegan wrath. Visibly counting to five, Riley closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then counted again for good measure.
“This is my damned case, Kane,” he ground out, stepping back from the counter to face his brother. “I can handle this.”
“And you’re still on it.” He knew what Riley was feeling. His partner, Sanchez, offered to do the deed, but Kane decided he should step up, especially since he was yanking the rug out from under his baby brother. “Kel and I are primary, and you’re with us.”
“I just talked to Brownie an hour ago. He said he had the stomach flu and was coming in.” Riley gnawed on his denial, spitting out pieces of it at Kane.
“His flu turned out to be his appendix. You can go visit him at the hospital later on.” Kane tried to look apologetic, but Riley was too pissed off for sympathy. “Come on. You’re junior and this is a huge fucking mess. Captain thought that it would be best if we took it. That’s how things work, Riley. You know that.”
“Just because I know it, doesn’t mean I have to like it.” His spitting anger lessened, but Kane knew it simmered just below the surface. “You know what this feels like? Like when someone we didn’t expect shows up at Thanksgiving and I get shoved back down to the kiddie table. That’s what this fucking feels like. I’m going to take a walk. Maybe grab some coffee. Don’t expect me to fucking bring you any, asshole.”
Riley slid past Sanchez on his way out, brushing against the lean Hispanic inspector without saying a word. Kel raised his eyebrows at his partner, and Kane merely shook his head, warning Kel against saying anything. Shrugging, the man strolled in, working the air out of his latex gloves with a flex of his fingers.
“Baby bro’s a bit ticked off, eh?” Sanchez grinned foolishly at the blonde examiner. “God, she’s hot. I love a woman who knows her shit.”